One man's junk ...
On Newburyport artist's canvas, old trucks become treasured icons
NEWBURYPORT -- Their faces are full of character, their fenders full of rust.
Alan Bull paints trucks, some still working around the farm, others retired to the backwoods. Every one of them has a story to tell.
"I think now I'm understanding what that narrative is a little more," said Bull, 42, of Newburyport. "The passing of this particular era in American history. The passing of this era in my own family history. My uncle is the last of what has been generations of farmers in my family on Long Island. After he retires, I'm quite sure nobody in my family is going to take over this farm."
"Junked: The Truck Paintings of Alan Bull" opened Tuesday in his hometown's Firehouse Center for the Arts and will run through Jan. 22. Roughly 25 of his works are on display, including new works for sale and old favorites borrowed from collectors.
Trucks from roughly the 1930s through the '60s are seen late in their lives, some still useful, some slowly turning to scrap. The woods grow up around the old flatbed in "Big Blue." "Three Trucks" is a chilly study of aging workhorses under a bleak midwinter sky. The setting sun of "Late in Day" says it all.
Bull's mother grew up in a farming family in Orient, N.Y., on Long Island. His father's family were farmers in Maine, where Bull was raised around Old Town. Bull has painted trucks in both areas, as well as in Essex County. He landed in Amesbury in 1987 and in Newburyport a few years later, becoming a well-known figure in the local arts scene.
His paintings are "locating a time when things were done differently," said the Firehouse Gallery's director, Karen Dardinski. "A truck was usually with a guy and another guy lifting stuff and pulling stuff, and now the service comes out and does it for you.
"I think he catches on something from our past, something magical about men and machines," Dardinski said. "And the slight abstraction he puts in there, he does with light and atmosphere. There's something very personal about them, as opposed to just machinery."
The paintings often sell right from the easel. They have become a trademark without Bull planning it.
"The first truck was painted in 1995 for the Newburyport Wet Paint Auction. That year the auction was on a very rainy day, so I had to think of an alternative to painting out on location. And I had this photo of an old truck on my grandparents' farm on Long Island, and I thought it would make an interesting painting," Bull said.
"So I painted that, and after the auction, two or three other people came up to me and asked if they could get a truck from me, too. It was right then, I knew. And I had so much fun painting it. I had never painted anything like that before."
The next step was an artist-in-residence position near his relatives' farm in Orient, during which he found more old trucks to paint and really figured out why they resonated, he said. "It was very much the turning point for that community, going from what had been up until then very much a working-class farming community to the new hot weekend place for Hamptons transplants -- New Yorkers looking for a second place. So I could sell the truck paintings almost as quickly as I could paint them."
Collectors Derrick and Donna Cephas have family roots in Orient and homes there and in Manhattan. Seven or eight of Bull's truck paintings adorn the two houses.
"They're just exquisite, and the colors are amazing," Donna Cephas said. "My husband grew up on a family-owned farm, and so we have a special affinity for these forms, for these old trucks. It's a wonderful way to keep this lifestyle... preserved."
Bull's involvement in the arts goes beyond the paintings. He is often seen on local stages as a drummer and guitarist -- and as an actor. He is also part of local social action programs, including the Free Art initiative and Artists for Darfur.
He's not always sure about being "the guy who paints trucks." No artist likes to be pigeonholed or confused with calendar kitsch. More than once, a cutesy illustration of a truck peeking out of an old barn has been mistakenly identified as an Alan Bull -- even when he's standing right there.
"That's part of the reason that when I left Long Island in 2000, I was kind of happy to leave this imagery behind. It was almost that people were seeing me as that kind of artist.... I felt a reluctance from people to accept other kinds of subjects I wanted to paint," said Bull, who has a river-view studio on Water Street.
Now, after several series of other works -- landscapes and nudes and softer-edged images from a trip to Spain -- he has come back to trucks. "For good or bad," he said, "I've been able to return to this subject with a new kind of viewpoint."
Bull's truck paintings can be viewed at alanbull.com. "Junked" will be on display at the Firehouse Gallery, 1 Market Square in Newburyport, through Jan. 22. A reception with the artist will be held Sunday, noon to 2 p.m. Information about the gallery is available at firehouse.org. 