EDUCATION

MFA Painting/Sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute, 1991
BFA Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 1979
BA History, University of California at Berkeley, 1975

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2008
Shaped Canvas: Solo Exhibit of Jeff Sully Evolving Art Gallery,
San Francisco, CA

2007
® Rhythms of Abstraction Sebastopol, CA
® The Edge of Abstraction San Rafael, CA
® Galex 41, Galesburg, Illinois

2006

® Spirit’s Contour: Shaped Paintings UC Berkeley North Regional Library
Facility. El Cerrito, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT
® January Juried Show Gallery Route One. Point Reyes, CA
® Evolving Art. San Francisco, CA
® Big Pagoda. San Francisco, CA

2005
® Carl Cherry Center for the Arts. Carmel, CA
® Spirit’s Contour: Shaped Paintings UC Berkeley North Regional Library
Facility. El Cerrito, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT
® Galex 39 Galesburg Civic Arts Center. Galesburg, Illinois

2004
® Giorgi Gallery. Berkeley, CA
® National Small Works Show. Red Dot Fine Art. Sante Fe, NM
® Competition Exhibit. Gallery Route 1. Point Reyes , CA AWARD.
® If It Were Lived. The Zen Center San Francisco. 300 Page St., San
Francisco.
SOLO EXHIBIT
® 50 Fremont, San Francisco, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT
® Awards Exhibit. Gallery Route 12

2003
® Small Works 2003, Limner Gallery, New York, NY
® Modesto Art Center and Gallery , Modesto, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT
® Spring Show Mad River Post, San Francisco, CA

2002
® Spring Salon 2002, Limner Gallery, New York, NY
® The Zen Center, San Francisco, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT

2001
® "The Summer Show", The Painting Center, New York, NY
® Bay Area Properties, Berkeley, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT

2000
® "New Voices - New Visions" Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur,CA.
® Crocker-Kingsley 72nd Exhibition: Sacramento, CA
® “And Ah”, SF Zen Center, 300 Page, San Francisco, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT
® Mixed Media Paintings @ 455 Market Street, San
Francisco, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT
® Gallery Route One Year 2000 Juried Exhibit, Point Reyes, CA

1999
® " Meditations", University Lutheran Church, Berkeley, CA
SOLO EXHIBIT

JEFFREY SULLY

Biography

Jeffrey Sully began painting, in watercolor, as a way of recording his dreams in high school. For years he continued with that focus, making the dream images with acrylic and collage.

After finishing college, he began to paint on larger scale and attended the SF Art Institute, getting his BFA in painting in 1979. In the years after the Art Institute, Jeffrey explored computer graphics for a few years, eventually becoming dissatisfied with the non-tactile nature of the media. He then began working with wood, carved directly into stumps and trunks of felled Oak, Madrone, Bay, and Walnut trees. These pieces were flowing, organic shapes.

At this time, as well, Jeffrey lived in front of a carpenter shop which discarded wood scraps in a variety of sizes and shapes; he began gluing, assembling, and forming pieces from these scraps into more angular and edgy sculptures. Soon these pieces also were painted, and became lively surprising shapes of all sizes.

After graduate school at the Art Institute, Jeffrey’s interest was focused on the painted surfaces as much as the sculpted forms which were their support. The paint on these surfaces was scraped, burned, washed, and layered; the result was an “aged” surface which looked as if it were rediscovered after years of natural stresses. With these surfaces in mind Jeffrey moved towards painted flat surfaces again.

What developed as part of the process were changes in the shapes of the paintings. Using the skills he learned through sculpting wood, Jeffrey began to alter the rectangular format of his paintings; he either begins with a shape which expressed a spare sense of mystery, or he unstretches the canvas, reforms and rebuilds the stretchers, then restretches the canvas. This process has become an essential part of the composition each painting. Influenced by a budding Buddhist sensibility, Jeffrey’s paintings have grown to embody a unique contemporary spiritual presence.