The art market has spoken, and it speaks fluent Lucy Bull. When her painting "18:50" sold for $2,381,467 at Christie's Hong Kong in 2024, it was the latest confirmation of what galleries and collectors have known for years: this Los Angeles-based painter possesses something rare and valuable.
The Artist: California's Chromatic Visionary
Born in 1990 and represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Bull has developed a distinctive visual language that hovers between abstraction and suggestion. Her canvases pulse with layers of color, transparent washes building into dense passages of chromatic intensity. There are hints of landscape, of underwater worlds, of cosmic phenomena – but nothing is fixed. The images shimmer with possibility.
The Work: Painting as Portal
Bull's paintings function as portals into states of consciousness rather than depictions of external reality. Her "Ash Tree" exhibition at David Kordansky (May-June 2024) featured large-scale horizontal diptychs that envelop viewers in their chromatic fields. Critics have noted how her work "makes space for the unnameable."
The Breakthrough: Seven-Figure Territory
With nine works now having sold for over $1 million since 2022, and a 2024 auction total approaching $10 million, Bull has definitively entered the upper echelon of market performers. Her first U.S. museum exhibition at ICA Miami (December 2024-March 2025) "The Garden of Forking Paths" further legitimizes her institutional standing.
Why Now? The Desire for Depth
In a visually oversaturated world, Bull's work offers depth – literal and metaphorical. Her paintings reward slow looking, revealing new relationships and resonances with each encounter. This is painting that asks for time, and collectors are willing to pay for that invitation.
Conclusion: Depths Worth Exploring
Lucy Bull represents the enduring power of paint to create experiences unavailable elsewhere. Her market success is a symptom of something more profound: a collective hunger for contemplative beauty.