Stefana McClure

Stefana McClure works with text in the way that a painter works with chiaroscuro, contrasting light and shadow to create psychologically dense works of art. The first time I encountered her work I was moved by the painstaking skill involved in slicing and knitting the thin strips of paper. As I spent time with the individual pieces [see images 1-3, above], a dark presence slowly emerged, casting its shadow across the intricately woven text. I later learned that they were made from government documents obtained and released by the ACLU, detailing the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used by the CIA on Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The black ink was redacted text, adding another layer of shock and revulsion. The stark juxtaposition of the exquisite and horrific is a recurring theme in McClure’s work, as she uses language and writing to express the complexity and capacity of human nature. And what better medium to convey its inherent contradictions? McClure finds poetry in the threat of violence when she wraps her Protest Stones in feminist verse, admittedly pointless when you’re on the receiving end of the stone, but wry humor is another important aspect of her work. Indeed, McClure is self-deprecating when describing her process, and is quick to poke fun at the absurdity of her time-devouring studio practice. In her words, “It’s serious work, but it doesn’t take itself very seriously.” She spends weeks and months extracting exhaustive information and condensing it into a single piece, as she does in her Films on Paper. In this series, inspired by her love of foreign films, she copies the subtitles, including the typos and clumsy translation, and superimposes them on a monochromatic field, positioned as on a television screen. The writing is illegible, but carries the energy of the film, just as her wrapped novels carry the intent of the writer. McClure’s love of language is visible in every work, and her fluency in Japanese, as well as her time spent as a translator and interpreter, give her a unique insight into the gap between languages, where much of meaning is lost. McClure doesn’t seek to eliminate the gaps, nor does she deny the threat of violence that is present in much of her work. Instead, she seems to embrace the fissures that exist between cultures and within our collective psyche. McClure’s appropriation and reconfiguring of literature allude to some of our greatest achievements, while humbly acknowledging the darker aspects of humanity.

MH: You grew up in Northern Ireland during a time of prolonged conflict. Did the political climate have an influence on your decision to become an artist?
SMcC: The conflict definitely gave me something to push back against and fight for, which probably influenced my decision to become an artist. I grew up in a province where language could be a dangerous and sometimes fatal weapon, so it’s not coincidental that when I started making art, language became my material of choice.
MH: You later went to art school in London and after graduation moved to Japan where you lived for twelve years. How did that cultural shift affect the direction and style of your work?
SMcC: The experience of living between cultures and languages very much affected my work. I went to Japan with the intention of studying paper making, but I soon realized that I couldn’t study anything because of the language barrier. So I launched myself on a three-year manic study of Japanese and ended up being good enough at it that I was able to work as a translator, and ultimately as an interpreter. At some point I realized that language isn’t neutral, and that realization influenced my work. As Etel Adnan said, “We don't think the same way in every language. Language is a tool that acts on us, collaborates with thinking, is not neutral.”
MH: Your studio practice comes out of your love of literature, poetry, and film. Did an early influence guide you in that direction?
SMcC: My dad was a teacher and the principal of the local primary school where my mother also taught. She prided herself on teaching all subjects through art, and often brought writers into our classroom, such as the poet Seamus Heaney. His reading of Mid-Term Break, a poem about the death of his younger brother who was killed by a car when he was only four years old, made a profound impression on my nine-year-old self. The final line is particularly devastating: “A four-foot box, a foot for every year”.
MH: Next to mathematics, language is our most precise mode of communication. Do you work with text because of its relative accuracy, or do you see your work as more approximate and poetic?
SMcC: Definitely the latter. One of the things that attracts me to language is all the slipperiness, those things that can’t be translated or don’t exist in other languages. It’s not precise in any kind of way.
MH: The first time I saw your work was in 2011 at your solo show, Secrets & Lies, at Josée Bienvenu Gallery. There was a series of text pieces made from declassified government documents, heavily redacted to hide the names and techniques relating to “enhanced interrogation”. You sliced and glued the documents into a thin paper strand, knitting it into exquisite weavings. The black redacted text was at once deeply disturbing and breathtakingly beautiful. Do you often juxtapose psychological elements in your work?
SMcC: With the redacted drawings it was a conscious decision to take that horribly disturbing information and make it into something beautiful. People were drawn to the work in spite of themselves, and then discovered that it was made from records of “enhanced interrogation” methods. Another piece in that show was a folded shroud entitled Manner of Death: Natural. This was made from autopsy reports of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers who had been tortured to death in U.S. custody, and in all cases their deaths were deemed “natural”. I downloaded hundreds of pages of autopsy and death reports and knit them into a long, folded burial sheet. It was a very powerful piece to make because it took many months, so I spent a lot of time with it.
MH: In an ongoing series, you slice an entire novel into sentences, join them into a continuous length, then wind them into balls, similar to balls of yarn. I get the impression that you love the process of repetitive labor, as well as the physical contact with books. It’s like you just want to touch them, handle them, be in contact with them.
SMcC: Yes, I call these sculptural drawings, and they’re deconstructed books, often lengthy ones, such as Moby Dick and The Odyssey. I slice them apart sentence by sentence, then reconfigure the pieces into a continuous length of string. The process gives me long lengths of time to spend with the book, and I often reread it as I go along. For this reason I only use books that I absolutely love and want to spend time with.
MH: Do you ever feel like you’re ingesting the book?
SMcC: Yes, absolutely. It becomes part of me in some way. Right now I’m working on a series of circadian novels, which take place over the course of a single day. Ulysses by Joyce is an obvious one, also Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf, and After Dark by Haruki Murakami. I’m drawn to material that’s so compelling that it represents a whole world unto itself.
MH: An important aspect of your work is that it is scrupulous, complete, and faithful. For example, when you wind a novel into a ball, you use the book in its entirety, from the copyright page to the appendices. And you don’t cheat by using a tiny ‘starter ball’, which would be so convenient, and who would ever know? Why is this level of integrity critical to your work?
SMcC: It’s conceptual work, and the idea behind this series is that it’s faithful to the book. Take for example Moby Dick; the book in its entirety becomes the big white whale. It wouldn’t make sense to leave portions of it out, because as a conceptual piece of work, it has to be the whole thing. I also structure them so that they start at the end of the book and work towards the beginning, so on the outside you see the beginning of the book rather than the end.
MH: Many of your pieces have a subversive quality, much like the books from which they originate. Others possess the threat of violence, like the text-covered stones that were part of your childhood experience in Northern Ireland. Would you talk about the aggressive potential of your work?
SMcC: The protest stones started out as an installation of eight children’s jackets, with a pair of stones in the pockets. Each pair of stones is covered with the text from a single poem that referenced the Troubles, the thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland. For the text I used poems from Seamus Heaney’s anthology North, first published in 1975. I collected stones from our back yard in Brooklyn, covered them with his poetry, and knocked off their edges by hurling them at the stone walls of our basement. The idea was that the words of the poems gained some extra weight by the threat and anticipation of violence.
MH: What you describe sounds really powerful, like you were imbuing the stones with a heightened energy or force.
SMcC: Yes. As kids we carried a stone in each pocket, and the idea was that we could throw them at army vehicles, or we could use them to gain extra time to get away from any trouble. As I continued making these weapons, the stones started to become more lethal, so I moved on to making hurling weapons, the kind used to take down an animal by entangling its legs. When I started making these, I turned to the works of feminist poets like Emily Dickinson and Forough Farrokhzad, clothing the stones in their poetry.
MH: Books have been weaponized throughout history, either to persuade or justify violence against perceived enemies. But they also express the profound depth of the human experience, and your work seems to embrace both capacities, sometimes within a single piece. Does this dichotomy create a tension that feeds your process?
SMcC: I like to have that tension there. It gives life and purpose to the work. But I bring poetry and nuance to the fight, engaging in a form of poetic politics. Words are my weapons and my tools.
MH: Tell me a little about your film subtitle series. It’s more subtle than the work with books, and more difficult to comprehend. You mentioned that you copy the subtitles of foreign movies, sometimes in several languages, and superimpose them as they appear on a movie screen?
SMcC: The series is a direct result of spending those twelve years in Japan, watching a lot of foreign movies and reading the subtitles. As I became more fluent in the language, I wondered what impression a Japanese person would have if they didn’t know the original language of the film. The subtitles, especially the dialogue spoken by strong Western women, were often dumbed down, translated to be softer and more culturally appropriate. My Films on Paper—drawings that consist of the superimposition of the subtitles, closed captions or intertitles of an entire movie—address this phenomenon. To make the drawings I watch a film frame by frame, systematically inscribing all of the subtitles on top of one another on a ground of transfer paper. The process is subtractive: the surface of the paper is slowly eroded as successive layers of information are transferred off. Hours of translated dialogue are reduced to a ghost form, dense in the middle, fading towards the edges.
MH: Whether you’re working with books or film, your process is incredibly meticulous and time-consuming. You mentioned that your audience has a wide range of reactions, including raw anger. Why do you suppose your work would expose a person’s anger issues?
SMcC: I think some people are incensed that anyone would have the luxury, as they view it, of putting so much time into a piece of work, especially a piece that at a glance looks minimal. For some reason the film series seems to evoke this reaction. Condensing time and information into a piece is what my work is all about, but I think some people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that anyone would choose to spend their time at such an effort.
MH: Artists spend countless hours laboring in their studios, attempting to bring a piece to a reasonable level of satisfaction so they can let it go and move on to the next piece. Beyond engaging in creative expression and satisfying handiwork, do you ever consider that we’re working out something on a deeper level?
SMcC: I hope so. I think on a certain level our work is a form of meditation, of close, quiet time. I hope we’re working out something a little more profound in our heads.
MH: I think of all the women who came before us, sitting in their parlors doing their fancywork for hours upon hours, and I wonder if it had parallels with our daily studio practice. Working with their hands, aligning something deep within themselves, and bringing a kind of equanimity into the greater world.
SMcC: Maybe. I love what Virginia Woolf said: “Knitting is the saving of life.”
MH: You have a series where you hired a professional typist to copy a poem while wearing gloves with type wheels attached. [see video below] My interpretation of these hilariously awkward and ungainly performances is that you’re underscoring the blundering, clownlike aspect of humanity. We try so hard to do what’s right or reasonable, but we’re eternally ham-handed. Was this part of your concept?

SMcC: I love your interpretation, so I’ll say yes. I was aware that it was hilarious on some level, because obviously you can’t turn a poem into an exact image, and it was a ridiculous form of translation. The gloves had IBM golf balls attached to the end of each finger and thumb, and the idea was that any of those 88 characters had a chance of being represented. I’m very attracted to obsolete technology, and there is a lot of humor in the piece. All of my work has a level of humor, but people don’t always recognize it. It’s serious work, but it doesn’t take itself very seriously.
MH: Many of your pieces deal with injustice, violence, and cruelty. Do you have faith that humanity will pull through this challenging time, or has human nature irrevocably shifted toward darkness?
SMcC: I have to maintain hope that we can pull through. Hopefully what’s going on right now isn’t irrevocable. As artists, we have to believe that we can survive through art.
MH: What role, if any, do artists have in maintaining the decency and goodness of humanity? Or is our creative endeavor a form of escapism?
SMcC: I don’t think it’s a form of escapism. Art has the power to change how people think. That’s huge. As long as we can make meaningful work and get it out there, it has the potential to make a difference.
MH: I don’t know if any single artist has the ability to make that shift, but as a collective effort, maybe a shift is possible.
SMcC: Right, but we’re talking about incremental shifts; at some point there’s a critical mass. As Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” We’re choosing to spend our time engaged in a studio practice that brings meaning to our lives, and hopefully to the lives of others.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SMcC: Art making, especially when it focuses on resistance and repair, is a truly human endeavor. It helps us explore the world and understand it better and provides us with material and a framework in which to think. And, as John Cage said, “We make our lives by what we love.”

IMAGE LIST
  1. Redacted (Waterboard), detail, 2010, knitted paper, 25.75 x 25.75 inches
2. Redacted (Enhanced Techniques), 2010, knitted paper, 25.75 x 25.75 inches
3. Redacted (Top Secret), detail, 2011, knitted paper, 25.75 x 25.75 inches
  4. Manner of Death: Natural, 2011, knitted paper, 7.4 x 3.7 feet
  5. Manner of Death: Natural, detail, 2011, knitted paper, 7.4 x 3.7 feet
  6. Silenced Voices: Forough Farrokhzad (The Wind-Up Doll), 2021, Moleskine notebook, perforated archival ink-jet print, pearls, 10 x 15 x 1 inches
  7. Silenced Voices: Forough Farrokhzad (The Wind-Up Doll), detail, 2021, Moleskine notebook, perforated archival ink-jet print, pearls, 10 x 15 x 1 inches
8. Whammo Bricks, 2017, vintage clay bricks wrapped with poet Öyvind Fahlström's "whammo,” an invented language based on onomatopoeic expressions in American comic strips, 8 x 3.5 x 2.25 inches each
9. Riot: a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, 2020, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 4 x 5 x 3 inches, right stone: 3 x 5 x 3 inches
10. Protest: a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 2020, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 3.5 x 5 x 2 inches, right stone: 4 x 5 x 1.5 inches
11. Rebellion: poems from an anthology by Forough Farrokhzad, 2021, poetry-wrapped stones, Italian ruby spring twine, cut nail, 6’ 3" x 7" x 7"
12. Rebellion: poems from an anthology by Forough Farrokhzad, detail, 2021, poetry-wrapped stones, Italian ruby spring twine, cut nail, 6’ 3" x 7" x 7"
13. Protest Jackets, 2018, eight jackets, ten wooden pegs, 16 poetry-wrapped stones, 28 x 80 x 7 inches
14. Protest Jackets, detail, 2018, eight jackets, ten wooden pegs, 16 poetry-wrapped stones, 28 x 80 x 7 inches
15. The Hunting of The Snark: a poem by Lewis Carroll, 2023 – 2024, cut paper, 19.5 inches circumference
16. Ulysses: a novel by James Joyce, 2020, cut paper, 20.5 inches circumference
17. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson, 2021, cut paper, 18.5 inches circumference
18. Map of the World (Central Europe), 2006, cut paper, 22 inches circumference
19. Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books, 2006, still from 36-minute single channel video
20. A Postcard from North Antrim: a poem by Seamus Heaney, 2018, Teflon mounted on notebook cover, 13.75 x 20 inches
21. Rage For Order: a poem by Derek Mahon, 2018, Teflon mounted on notebook cover, 12 x 17.75 inches
22. Scrapple From the Apple, 2007, detail, Teflon mounted on museum board with soundtrack, 3 panels, 13.25 x 13.25 inches each
23. Studio View: The Simpsons: The Complete First Season and Parasite: English subtitles to a film by Bong Joon-ho
24. The Simpsons: Season 1, Episode 1, 2014, yellow transfer paper mounted on rag, 10.6 x 12.5 inches
25. Gaslight: closed captions to a film by George Cukor, 2019, graphite transfer paper mounted on rag, 19 x 27.5 inches
26. Tokyo Story: English subtitles to a film by Yasujiro Ozu, 2015, wax transfer paper mounted on dibond, 40 x 60 inches
27. Wonder Woman: Japanese subtitles to a film by Patty Jenkins, 2018, transfer paper mounted on rag, 7.5 x 9.75 inches
28. Studio View
29. Modeling the modified gloves
30. Studio Portrait

Sharon Butler

Sharon Butler is an artist, writer, editor, and publisher of the art blog Two Coats of Paint. In 2011 she composed an essay for The Brooklyn Rail in which she coined the term New Casualism, an approach that defined a new aesthetic and style of working. Butler did not invent Casualism so much as she noticed it in her own work as well as the work of other artists. It is characterized by the sense of a work being incomplete, unrefined, and unresolved in contrast with the traditional criteria of Western classicism. In the intervening years, Casualism has come to represent more of a tendency than a convention-defying trend, an inclination rather than a swagger. It values process over product, eschewing any formula or mannerism that may render a work suitable for the art market. For Butler, Casualism is a sensibility that extends beyond paint and canvas; hers is an open-ended process that favors the unexpected and unintentional. Beauty is incidental and subjective, interesting only insofar as it generates an emotional response. In her current work, Butler explores the relationship between the emotions and the intellect, searching for the sweet spot where both may be activated simultaneously. But the intentionality behind this inquiry may preclude the desired outcome, as, according to Butler, the emotions are most readily accessed through the accidental marks that suffuse her paintings. Indeed, it is the unintentional smudges, drips, and pentimenti that expose our humanity, not the calculated curves and angles of geometric abstraction. Humans make mistakes, create chaos, and are beset by blurry indecision, all of which contribute to an emotionally charged painting. But that’s only half the equation for Butler, who invites the intellect, with its surgical specificity, to interact and collaborate with our erratic emotions.

MH: How and when did you come to be an artist? Did your parents push you towards the artist’s path?
SB: I wasn’t pushed towards an artist’s path, but my parents were lovers of Modernism. They built a modern house in Stonington, Connecticut where I grew up, and the house and environment had a great influence on me. When we moved into the house there were lots of empty white walls, so my father painted replicas of his favorite abstract paintings. There were Mondrians, Picassos, and Klees, and I didn’t realize until later that these weren’t his original paintings. My mother lived in New York before they were married, and she took us on frequent trips to New York to visit the museums. So being surrounded by Modernist architecture and abstract art, and then having exposure to great art museums really informed my interest in art.
MH: You went to college in Boston and eventually found your way to New York. Did living in the city immediately have an impact on your work, or did it take a while to sink in?
SB: I just continued along the path that I was on. I was working abstractly at the time, painting big pieces of plywood, cutting them down with a jigsaw, and making these small constructions. At some point I took a studio in DUMBO, where all my power tools were stolen, and this had a big impact on the type of work I was making. It was a huge period of transition and I felt like New York got the better of me, so I ended up going to grad school in Connecticut where I got my MFA, then I moved back to New York. It was the two years in grad school that changed my work, more so than living in New York.
MH: In addition to being a painter, you’re also known for founding the art blog Two Coats of Paint and for writing an article in the Brooklyn Rail (2011) in which you coined the term New Casualism. This may be defined as an approach to painting that is intentionally dissonant, unpredictable, unfinished. 2011 was a long time ago, and I wondered if you still adhere to a Casualist sensibility in your work?
SB: I think of Casualism as a tendency rather than a movement, and there are several things that influenced my Casualist approach. One of them is that I moved a lot between places. I didn’t have a permanent studio, so I started using acrylics and unstretched canvases, and I’d fold them up when I had to move. This lifestyle began to affect my aesthetic. I started to like the way the folds looked on the canvas, and I became less interested in completion and resolution. When I looked around, I saw that other artists seemed to be working in the same way, and I began questioning this notion that paintings must be resolved. What if a painting wasn’t resolved? What would that mean? So I started looking at work that didn’t adhere to the Bauhaus principles of design and color, and this was the work that excited me. I wanted to write something about it, and the only reason I called it Casualism is that I needed to name it something so that I didn’t have to keep describing the work. It was just an easy way to discuss the tendencies that I was seeing.
MH: So if I understand you correctly, Casualism is a sensibility that continues to be present in your work; it’s basically who you are as an artist.
SB: It is. If someone tells me that no one likes green paintings, then I’m going to make green paintings. It’s kind of a contrary way of approaching the project.
MH: Do you find it ironic that Casualism, with its insistence on anti-formalism and rejection of traditional art school training and pedagogy, is now required reading in art school?
SB: I’m glad that it’s required reading in art school, because it’s simply a different way of looking at things and a different way of thinking about all those Bauhaus principles. If you do things in a way that you’re not supposed to do them, that’s how you’re going to come to something new.
MH: You have a lot of art instruction and you paint well, so your Casualism is going to be different than someone who doesn’t have that background. Is classical training essential before the artist can embrace a Casualist sensibility?
SB: I don’t think so. I appreciate things related to mark making and process that aren’t necessarily valued by other people. I was once a juror for a competition for high school students, which consisted of a bunch of carefully rendered drawings from magazines and films. The piece I chose for first place was a drawing that was crudely drawn, but the marks were very emotional and moving. The students were very upset.
MH: To create art without regard for formal concerns, the artist must possess a heroic amount of self-confidence. Without conventional standards by which one can gauge the results of their work – indeed, with notions of good and bad art taken out of the equation – the artist is called upon to trust in her own aesthetic choices. Is supreme self-confidence part of your DNA?
SB: (Laughing) No, I don’t think I have supreme self-confidence. Doubt is a big part of my work, and I like to see doubt in other artists’ work. My grounding in art history has been very important, because it allows me to think of my work as an extension of something from an earlier time. This knowledge of art history differentiates trained artists from untrained artists. I can slash a canvas, but I know that other people have done it before me, so I’m responding to, and having a conversation with, those earlier artists. Whereas an untrained artist might slash the canvas and think they’re the first person to do so.
MH: Ralph Waldo Emerson, who may have been the first Casualist, wrote a brilliant essay on Self-Reliance, in which he famously speaks of the need to “Trust thyself.” Is radical self-trust a requirement for the artist’s journey? Without it are we more apt to fall into the trap of imitation and assimilation?
SB: I think the key to being a successful artist is developing self-trust. And it’s not like you either have it or you don’t; it happens over time. It’s about having a commitment to your vision, whatever that is, even if you’re committing to the idea that you’re going to do many different things. It’s a commitment to your ideas and to the artist’s path and to knowing that other people have walked the path.
MH: One of the questions that I like to ask artists is how they know when a piece is finished. The answers are always a variation of, “When everything is resolved and working together as a whole.” But in a Casualist painting, where incompletion and imbalance are de rigueur, the response is more nuanced. So I ask you: how do you know when a piece is finished?
SB: I don’t like a piece that looks overdetermined. I like there to be a sense of openness, of the unintentional. I try to avoid that point where the shapes are too obvious, when the sense of space is too specific.
MH: What happens when you’ve gone too far? Can you dial it back?
SB: Yeah, that’s when I get out the paint roller. I make a mess of it again, then I try to bring it back to the point where it’s almost there, but not quite. And that’s when I like to stop. If you go just a little bit further it might be even better, but sometimes you just have to trust and stop where you are.
MH: Does Casualism redefine beauty, or is beauty considered irrelevant, anathema?
SB: I have a complex relationship with beauty. It’s a relationship with beauty, desire, and the audience. How much do I care if someone else finds my work desirable? Do I want them to appreciate it from an intellectual standpoint? Do I want them to swoon over it? I think beauty is hugely important in how the audience responds to your work, and I’m not talking about the New York art world, but about the world at large. Beauty is the thing that can draw people in, no matter how little they know about art. We all find beauty in different things, and there are people who find it in the unfinished, the less skilled.
MH: Given that it’s so complex and personal, maybe beauty isn’t the goal. Is there another benchmark that you use to assess your painting’s quality or value?
SB: I don’t like to write about my own work, because I don’t want to understand the mystery. If I understand what I’m doing, then I can’t do it, because it requires a sense of unknowing.
MH: One of the things that I admire about your work is that it’s continually evolving. You don’t get stuck in a style or mannerism but continue to explore and expand your medium. Do you place higher value on your process than the finished work, or are they of a piece?
SB: I love the process of figuring out where I’m going. I can’t make ten of the same thing, so there’s always going to be the sense of a timeline in my work, of how I got from here to here to here. Often when I have a show, I’ll stop moving forward and explore one idea until I finish the work for the show. That’s my way of creating a series that seems cohesive, because my work in general has that sense of forward motion.
MH: In that situation, and in all your work, it would seem that the process is paramount, and the finished work is an outcome of your exploration.
SB: Yes. I’m not very product oriented, and I’ve always been insulated from the market. For many years I was a professor at a university, so I never had to support myself through selling paintings. It’s given me the freedom not to care. Back in the day, collectors were interested in the intellectual and emotional process of making the work, but now the collectors seem to be more interested in the product. This makes it harder for artists who are more attuned to process and ideas.
MH: As a writer and thinker, you spend a lot of time in your head, and your studio work has a decidedly intellectual bent. But your paintings are also emotional, and I’m curious how the two come together as you smear paint around the canvas for hours at a stretch.
SB: Now we’re getting to the main focus of my endeavor for all these years. The relationship between thought and feeling, going from the sliding scale of digital diagrams to the murky area of paint on canvas. How can you take a diagram or outline and infuse it with emotional content? Or how can you take a gestural painting and infuse it with intellectual content? Paintings need to have both, and my practice has been about exploring that relationship. Like cooking, more of this, less of that, tinkering with the ingredients. Right now I’m particularly interested in the emotional aspect of painting, whereas for many years when I was making digital diagrams on my phone app, I would start with an idea or shape and find a way to infuse some emotional content.
MH: Your work is not formulaic; indeed it may be described as anti-formulaic. So to create emotional paintings, the best you can do is to show up in the studio and be present. I think we all hope to show up in that way, but it can be exhausting to be your raw, emotional self for hours at a stretch.
SB: Yes, I think that’s right. But I’m a flinty New Englander. I grew up not thinking about emotions one way or another. My sisters and I learned to be emotionally resilient, to just get on with it. So this idea about the relationship of emotion, thought, and action and all of that behavioral analysis is fascinating, but it plays to my strength of analyzing. I’m not an emotional live wire; it takes thought for me to access it.
MH: It’s interesting that a person who doesn’t have immediate access to her emotions is aspiring to create emotionally charged paintings. You really do like a challenge.
SB: Yes, and my question is, what does it mean to create an emotional painting? I look for artists who are interested in finding that sweet spot, where they can work in geometric abstraction, but find humanity in it as well.
MH: Color resonance can summon a lot of emotion. A Renaissance painting of the Crucifixion is moving to us today because of its color structure, not the subject matter.
SB: I recently saw the Orphism show at the Guggenheim, and what I loved about the work was that it was experimental; it had been made before they mastered their ideas. It’s interesting that the Orphists were thinking about what it meant to remove the image from painting. Does that remove the humanity? And how can we bring it back through color?
MH: You speak of an emotionalist tendency within geometric abstraction, and I know there are many art historical references to be made, from Albers to Malevich to Agnes Martin. How does emotion present itself in your paintings, geometric or otherwise?
SB: I think it’s the unfinished, the blurry, the drippy, the indecisive, the doubt. That’s where it is. And the color, as we’ve been talking about. These are the elements that I consider to be the least intentional and therefore they carry the emotional content.
MH: Interesting. Does intentionality undermines the emotions?
SB: Yes, I’d say that’s true in my work. There’s something about certainty and specificity that requires an analytical approach, and that requires more forethought.
MH: Are the analytical and emotional mutually exclusive in painting?
SB: It’s always on a scale. I love the accident of painting one color over another, the lack of intentionality when the paint blurs. There’s something that’s unavoidable in the accidents that I find very moving and emotional. I’ve always thought that there’s nothing more heartbreaking than a badly drawn line.
MH: I find it intriguing that the accidental passages are those which carry the most emotion for you.
SB: Yes, and I always appreciate being surprised by that. Sometimes when the work looks too intentional, I have to go back and start again, trying to find those accidents.
MH: And in that process there are analytical decisions, such as, This looks too intentional, so you have to go back and make it unintentional.
SB: But then you’re intentionally being unintentional. There has to be an authenticity in the accident.
MH: You sound like an artist who doesn’t do many thumbnail sketches.
SB: I actually do a lot of them. When I was doing the digital drawings on my phone, I did thumbnail sketches before I started painting. I have to get to know the shapes and the spaces between them before I can begin painting.
MH: Art reflects the time and culture in which the artist lives. This is generally seen in the rear-view mirror, but do you have any insights or inklings of how the work being produced today is, or will be, representative of early 21st century art?
SB: I’m not very optimistic that in 100 years anyone will be thinking about the paintings we’re making today. We have so many challenges ahead; are they really going to be worried about art history? Will the wealthy collectors be shipping their collections off to Mars? I don’t know. I’m just not hopeful that with climate change, anything’s going to survive. Look at what’s happening in L.A. Raging wildfires are consuming entire collections. Artists are losing bodies of work produced over their lifetimes. I think we probably got the best of it, Meg. We had a lot of freedom, women’s rights and more, which the new administration will be in the process of clawing back from day one.
MH: You’re about to set sail on a new journey. What inspired your trip to Ireland, and more importantly, giving up your studio?
SB: I’ve been in studios in DUMBO for over ten years, and I just needed a break. Sometimes you have to stop what you’re doing in your personal bubble and look up. This is that kind of period for me. I didn’t want to relive another four years of this administration by doing the same thing I did the last four years, because it didn’t work. It made no difference. So maybe there’s another way to approach the situation. I have several small projects going on, and many possibilities, but I’m not ready to pick anything yet. Being able to move around is something that I’m interested in – moving around and being with other people whose paths I wouldn’t cross if I continued working in my bubble.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SB: There are so many good things, and I’ve been pleased with every aspect. I love getting up in the morning and focusing on the things that I want to. You get to a point where your work coalesces and you have a better understanding of what it is and what you’re doing, and the older you get the better it gets. It’s like a rich stew. You start out with a broth, and you throw in a couple of things, and you stir it for several years and then it gets a little thicker, and by the time you‘ve reached my age, the flavor becomes so much more complex and interesting. Had I stopped when I was in my 30s or 40s, I wouldn’t have reached this point, so I’m grateful to have had the opportunities I’ve had in order to keep going. I can’t imagine being anything other than an artist.

www.sharonlbutler.com

The artist will be giving a talk at the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts in Dublin, Ireland on January 29 .