Newsletter, February 12, 2025
This month, being outside a studio in which most days passed one very much like the next until ten years went by, I have lots of news. As they say on the podcasts, let’s get into it. Stories from...
Dear Friends, Family, and Colleagues,
This month, being outside a studio in which most days passed one very much like the next until ten years went by, I have lots of news. As they say on the podcasts, let’s get into it.
Stories from Ireland, which was as bracing as the editor and I hoped, are first on the list. We wandered around from museum to gallery to pub, and I gave a talk, “As Close as Two Coats of Paint,” at the Royal Hibernian Academy of Art. The talk delved into the relationship between my writing and painting practices. It was heartening to see a room filled with engaged artists, some of whom follow Two Coats of Paint. Special thanks go out to Diana Copperwhite for suggesting it and to RHA director Colin Martin for scheduling and promoting the talk. With little lead time, these artist friends marshalled an abundant, informed, and enthusiastic group.
While in Dublin, we visited a few studios, including that of Robert Armstrong, a painter whose workspace is nestled within the Temple Bar Gallery + Studio complex. His canvases radiate with a kind of atmospheric depth that evokes Turner’s moody vistas, but with a more contemporary thick-and-thin line-and-wash approach. We went to Cork, where we visited Dierdre Frost, whose paintings mine a mildly dystopic urban landscape vein, in her riverfront studio. We took the double-decker bus outside downtown Dublin to visit Diana Copperwhite’s studio, located behind her house in what might have once been a garage or a large potting shed. Diana’s focus is on translating light into color, in big gestural abstractions of squeegeed expanses. The space was packed with work in progress for several upcoming shows. Shortly after our visit she headed to Hong Kong to give a talk about her work, and then on to Melbourne where she had work in an art fair.
The final studio visit was completely unexpected. Cued by new friends at Kerlin Gallery – where we later saw a retrospective of Richard Gorman’s Minimalist yet tactile kōzo-pulp work – we went to see a fiercely political, mission-driven show of Brian Maguire’s paintings at Hugh Lane Gallery. There we discovered, in the back room, Francis Bacon’s legendary studio – not recreated but reconstituted: the real thing, transported piece by piece and installed in a vacuum-sealed enclosure. It was an eerie time-capsule ode to his chaotic artistic process. Piles of paper, paint cans, dirty brushes, and paint-streaked debris are sprawled in frozen disarray. Looking through the plexiglass window, I half-expected to hear Bacon banging around in a frenzy, still at work on his desperate depictions of the human condition.
Back at the Temple Bar Gallery, just downstairs from Robert Armstrong’s studio, we were fortunate enough to catch Fergus Feehily’s show “Fortune House.” By chance, Joe Fyfe had just pitched a piece for Two Coats of Paint on a book, The Horse and The Rider, that Feehily had created specifically for the exhibition. This episode was true kismet. Feehily’s paintings, especially in the context of his interest in documenting the everyday through writing and book projects, possess a quiet, ethereal quality that really grabbed me.
A day-long detour to Kilkenny uncovered an unexpected personal connection. The Butler name, to which I had honestly never given much thought, is deeply embedded in the town’s late medieval history. Starting in the 1300s, the Butlers were an invading Norman-Anglo force – lords of a grand castle and sources of tangled family trees. My direct lineage remains uncertain, but an ancestor of mine was buried there in the 1600s. Were my Butlers tyrants and schemers, or simply an unremarkable thread in the complex Norman-Anglo strand of Irish history? I don’t really know, but whenever I introduced myself to people in Ireland, they all seemed to know more about my family history than I did.
Meanwhile, in the world beyond art and ancestry, the political traumas of today grind on. Trump 2.0 began while I was abroad, and for a moment I enjoyed a sense of surreal detachment. Elon Musk didn’t waste any time commandeering the federal government. Against this backdrop, I engineered my own small rebellion, steering a modest segment of the hulking art community away from MAGA Meta apps over to an independent social media platform called Bluesky. The platform is currently helmed by Jay Graber, and I hope the oligarchs won’t make her an offer she can’t refuse. Bluesky offers a sliver of freedom from the algorithm, unlike Instagram, wherein censorship – particularly of anti-MAGA discourse – seems to have become routine. Speaking of takeovers, Trump has recently begun his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts. I imagine he has been fantasizing about becoming the next Ed Sullivan since childhood, but with a vindictive, authoritarian twist. Didn’t Mussolini or Kim Jong-un do something like this? See you at the National Day of Protest on February 17 at noon.
This year amid the turmoil, I’ve returned to my practice of making daily drawings – a portable project that echoes the Good Morning drawing series that I posted on Instagram during Trump’s first term. These new handmade drawings are rawer and rougher, which feels appropriate given the willful cruelty issuing every day from the White House.
I’ve also been contributing more content than usual to Two Coats of Paint. I penned a piece about Chris Martin’s show of massive paintings at Timothy Taylor and another on Diana Cooper’s public art project on Roosevelt Island. I marveled at Kate Shepherd’s mystical ability to inject emotional content into geometric abstraction. While I was in Ireland, I wrote about Deirdre Frost’s exhibition at Kevin Kavanagh, one of the finest galleries in Dublin. They have been sending me press releases for years, and I enjoyed finally meeting Kevin and his team. On Tuesday, I published a remembrance of Walter Robinson. His passing is a tremendous loss. Walter was an early role model for me, a fellow artist-writer-publisher navigating the intersection of those worlds with wit and ease.
Thanks for reading to the end of the lengthy February report. Look for the next one in your inbox on March 14. As always, thanks for your generous support of this project and Two Coats of Paint.
Hang in there.
XXS Sharon
On view: One of my paintings is hanging with 99 others at Brintz & COLONY Gallery in Palm Beach. The show, XXS, curated by Wendy White, features small-scale works by 100 artists. If you find yourself in Florida – not necessarily a destination – it’s worth a visit. Artists include Keltie Ferris, Katherine Bradford, Kadar Brock, Michael Berryhill, Sharon Butler, Ethan Cook, Wendy White, Julia Wachtel, Matthew Day Jackson, Tony Matelli, Joanne Greenbaum, Enoc Perez, Rachel Rossin, Petra Cortright, Diana Al-Hadid, Andrea Marie Breiling, Gina Beavers, and many more.
Upcoming in March: Look for my work in the 2025 iteration of the American Abstract Artists’ New Member Show. The exhibition is on view March 8–29 at MC Gallery, 545 West 52nd Street, in Hell’s Kitchen. Artists include Beth Dary, Carrie Golkin, Erick Johnson, Sarah McDougald Kohn, Russell Maltz, Tom McGlynn, Christian Nguyen, Megan Olson, Alex Paik, Debra Ramsay, Leslie Roberts, Marcy Rosenblat, Sonita Singwi, Audrey Stone, Jason Stopa, Tamar Zinn, and me. I’d love to see you at the opening on Saturday, March 8, from 3–6 PM.
Further reading
Walter Robinson’s big question: What do they want?
Fergus Feehily: The Horse and The Rider
Studio Visit: Robert Armstrong’s uncanny cohesiveness
Deirdre Frost: Windows on the world
Report from Bluesky
Chris Martin: Staring into the sun
Diana Cooper: The energy of New York
Kate Shepherd: Feel me
Connections
To see images and information about recent projects, visit my website at www.sharonlbutler.com. Follow me on Bluesky at @sharonbutler.bsky.social and on Instagram at @sharon_butler
Protest on 17th is no long at City Hall!