Kitty Wells

Dan Buller is a Montreal-based artist and muralist who has been a pioneering figure in Canadian graffiti and street art. As a founding member of Heavyweight Art Installation formed in the late 1990s, he helped establish an artists' group that toured the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan performing live painting installations. The collective made their debut painting live at the 1999 Montreal Jazz Festival and has since been featured on the cover of Juxtapoz magazine.

Buller's early work as one half of the Puzzle Crew in Ottawa helped set the stage for the emergence of a school of street artists focused on innovation, dialogue, and community, moving away from the dominant ego-based forms of the art. His approach has influenced a generation of street artists in Canada.

Through Heavyweight Art Installation, Buller has participated in major festivals including the Coachella Festival in California, the Winter Music Conference in Miami, CMJ Festival in New York City, and the Candela Music and Arts Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The group has exhibited internationally in venues across Japan, England, Holland, Brussels, Germany, and Italy.

In 2008, Buller participated in the group show "Manifest Hope," curated by Shepard Fairey to support Barack Obama's first presidential campaign. His work has appeared in group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and Montreal. His mural portrait of Bernie Sanders, commissioned by the campaign, can be found in Los Angeles on the corner of Melrose and Spaulding.

Buller's artistic practice extends beyond street art and murals. He worked for five years as Hour Magazine's political cartoonist in Montreal and is known for his highly resolved portrait studies. In 2012, he created artwork for and directed an animated sequence that appears in the feature film "Rhymes for Young Ghouls." He also illustrated and co-created the graphic novel "Social Smarts" for the Privacy Commissioner of the Government of Canada.

Since 2012, Buller has been an active member of the Montreal-based painting group En Masse and has been a regular contributor to MU, a local Montreal charitable organization that transforms the city's public space by creating community-minded murals for over ten years. His murals have appeared on walls around Montreal as part of LNDMRK's MURAL festival.

One of his notable works is a large-scale mural portrait of Alys Robi on the wall of Cabaret Lion d'Or, created in blue tones to reflect both her Quebec heritage and the "Blue Note" jazz aesthetic of the 1940s. This mural is part of MU's "Tribute to Montreal's Cultural Builders" series, launched in 2010 to honor creators who have contributed to Montreal's cultural scene. The project included workshops with the organization "Dans la rue," where over fifteen young adults created their own murals under the guidance of cultural mediators.