Baker Artist Portfolios

As an artist, gallerist and educator Bridget Z. Sullivan actively creates and presents her artwork, presents the artwork of other artists and investigates and invents new methods of art making using contemporary tools in her art practice. Sullivan exhibits in solo and group exhibitions including exhibits at MaxGallery, School 33 Art Center, MAP, Load of Fun Gallery, Make Studio, and Jordan Faye Contemporary all in Baltimore, Maryland; Blackrock Art Center, Germantown, MD, Greenbelt Art Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Adkins Arboreteum, Ridgely, Maryland; Delaplaine Art Center, Frederick, Maryland; Ruby Art Collective, York Pennsylvania, and WomanKraft Gallery, Tucson, Arizona. On two occasions she was selected to serve as a volunteer in the National Park Service Artist in Residency (AIR) Program– in Acadia National Park, Schoodic Peninsula, Maine and in Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, Maryland.  Sullivan has been awarded 2 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist’s Grants, and her work has been featured in AfterImage: Inklight, and URHere Journal of Creative Geography. As a volunteer she serves as the president (2012-present) and curatorial director (2013-present) of Hamilton Arts Collective | Hamilton Gallery located in NE Baltimore.

Sullivan’s work is a crossing of mediums (digital photography, drawing and painting) that explores nature and the urban environment with a combination of reverence and intimate expression. The images survey natural and human made elements from many angles and distances. These depictions are enhanced and abstracted by painterly additions of color and text. The rich natural images converge with gestural strokes and emotive language that allows the viewer to engage with the greater implications of the subjects. Sometimes these embellishments are delicate; sometimes they obliterate the subject into a space of wonder.

Sullivan’s artistic process begins with photography and sustained observation of Nature or the immediate urban environment around her. She collects images on long walks/hikes in urban and natural settings. As she makes her way through her environment the place and the images reveal themselves to her. She is not the usual hiker. She gets lost along her path, moves at her own pace and becomes absorbed in her meditative act of photographing what surrounds her. Each of Sullivan’s photography expeditions net several hundred photographs of the details of what surrounds her. The environment presents itself at every turn. Over time Sullivan reviews the images and reflects on their visual and symbolic significance as they relate to her personal investigation of life and death and the human experience of moving through periods of health and illness. In the studio she reviews and prepares the images for printing. Once she arrives at an image she prints it and then draws, paints and writes on the print with graphite, pastel, acrylic ink, gouache, watercolor, acrylic, oil or encaustic paint. The result depicts the push and pull between humans and their visual digital realm–it is the meeting of hand rendered mark making and digitally produced images.