The Artists "Review" Artists Project was launched on June 30, 2008. Below is a "review" of Sharon Butler's work, Painting 23 (Pittsburgh), written by John M. Adams. Sharon provided the second jpeg, an image of Untitled, 22, as well as a brief response to John's "review."
Sharon currently resides in Beacon, NY, and John lives in Reston, VA.
If you would like to participate in this project, please email me at jtkirkland [at] gmail [dot] com.
Painting 23 (Pittsburgh)
oil on canvas board
18" x 24"
2007-08
The "Review"
Painting 23 (Pittsburgh) is made up of flat planes of warm gray, cadmium red and orange, an urban color scheme befitting the title. The contrasting color scheme is unified through a web of structural lines that seem to “breathe’ due to the fact that they appear to have been painted or draw prior to the application of the paint in the planes, leaving rough, uneven edges behind. The variation of line quality gives life to the geometric composition. This is enhanced through what appears to be thin, uneven application of the paint, exposing previous layers of under-painting.
Two overlapping geometric forms are implied through the line work. The central form seems to be a vertical structure with eschewed perspective. The other seems reminiscent of ductwork one may find in an industrial setting. Red/orange planes seem to follow what would be the left vertical plane of this second form, but sometimes a line from one form overlaps another, the color shifts, complicating the spatial relationships and altering perspective.
My initial reaction to the painting (when viewing it as a small preview in my email) was that it was quite simple, flat and the composition felt awkwardly static due to the distribution of color. But I was delighted and rewarded by looking harder, finding the play between color, space and surface. There is some good painting in there, and I am looking forward to seeing more work from this artist.
Untitled, 22
oil on canvasboard
18” x 24”
2007
The Response
I appreciate John’s sophisticated and thoughtful assessment of my painting, which he plainly “got.” The painting is number 23 in a 34-panel series, based on images of isolated observation towers. Most of the paintings in the series have an austere, limited palette and rely on line rather than shape to define the structure. The colored shapes make no. 23 something of an anomaly in the series, and that probably has to do with the experience that immediately preceded it. I had just returned from my first trip to Pittsburgh last fall when I started the painting. After delivering work to John Morris’s now-defunct Digging Pitt Gallery for “The Blogger Show,” I spent several (rainy) days visiting as many of the Iron City’s art museums and galleries as I could. In retrospect, the color infiltration may have been a subliminal reaction to the James Turrell light installations at the Mattress Factory, or Andy Warhol’s early ink illustrations on display at the Warhol Museum. Whatever the precise impetus, almost a year later I can see that “Untitled 23 (Pittsburgh)” foreshadowed my current preoccupation with an extended palette, geometric shapes, color relationships, and saturation.
Previous "Reviews":
Pam Farrell on Ken Weathersby
Paula McCullough on Aric Calfee
Lee Gainer on Leigh Waldron-Taylor
Aric Calfee on Paula McCullough
Matthew Ballou on Heather Levy
Giovanni Garcia-Fenech on TJ Norris
TJ Norris on Giovanni Garcia-Fenech
Susan Tolbert on Mary Klein
Heather Levy on Gail Vollrath
Sharon Butler on Matthew Ballou
Mark L. Power on Steven Alexander
Steven Alexander on Mark L. Power
Molly Norris on M. Trigos
Ken Weathersby on Joseph Barbaccia
Sondra Arkin on Susan Tolbert
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