Characteristic of Bullock’s paintings from this period, Remembrance features a powerful female figure undergoing transformation. Moved to a trance-like state by the dancers flanking her, she clutches a sacred vessel adorned with cowrie shells. Her yellow, stylized form echoes the vessel’s shape, as if the energy flows into and transforms her body. She becomes a keeper of histories. Three serpents undulate around the figure, their ability to shed skin representing constant cycles of change and renewal.
Over her remarkable career, Bullock has engaged deeply with dialogues surrounding African American identity, traditional and contemporary African art, and transatlantic artistic exchange. Raised in North Philadelphia and Germantown, she studied at the Fleisher Art Memorial and the Hussian School of Art. In the early 1970s, choreographer Arthur Hall recruited Bullock to lead the visual arts department at the Ile Ife Black Humanitarian Center, a Germantown organization that offered free classes to children and adults while fostering pride in the arts and cultures of the African diaspora. She went on to become a leading arts educator in the region, conducting more than two hundred residencies in schools, museums, and community centers and bringing hands-on creativity into the lives of thousands.
Bullock's honors include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and two Distinguished Teaching Artist awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work is exhibited nationally, and she continues to live and work in Germantown.
