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LIZA BUTTS: A SPECTRUM OF ECHOES
August 23 - October 18, 2024
Fantastical landscapes are depicted moving, shifting, and glowing. Tangled spaces that are seemingly untraversable bloom and glisten with vibrancy and energy. Using a saturated palette, the artist creates landscapes from imagery found in overgrown areas of the South, primarily in Alabama where the artist lives.
Imagery of kudzu and vines form visually dense compositions. The image spaces are tight fields of color and shapes, tapestries of marks, that form environments the artist refers to as “Fields.” The repetitive frames of the paintings—rectangles and squares— serve as a type of sequencing, informed by the artist’s interest in meditative and yogic practices that are used to access the subconscious mind and make subtle changes in the body. Memories and dreams become accessible through meditation, where phrases are repeated as a way to turn off the automatic mind and make subtle shifts in the subconscious landscape.
Figures are absent in the works. Wilderness spaces of solitude and reflection reveal subtle shifts that show themselves in patterned mark-making. The artist explores ancient myths and symbols of marshlands with titles like Field of Rushes, coming from an Egyptian myth of afterlife that speaks to transition and change. Marshlands serve as a metaphor for liminal in between places, hidden states of becoming, rich in growth and plant-life. Kudzu plants with their long overgrown vines that grow rapidly over terrains, hide abstract forms underneath.
Some paintings appear to be underwater, with expressive and fluid gestures. The artist uses oil paint diluted with mediums, applied over many layers. Mark-making reveals a history and a progression, with small movements coming in and out of focus. The paint’s fluid materiality points to liminal unfixed spaces where things change, move, and adapt quickly.
The artist grapples with personal and collective pressures where tensions are held both internally and externally in the landscape, situated within a political environment that is pulled between two poles; opposite ends of a spectrum. The work also deals with the early part of an artist’s career where pressures exist that the artist must reconcile with. The work attempts to hold these tensions to allow for something to rupture and emerge so transformation can take place.
Liza Butts
Terra Incognita
2024
oil on paper on canvas
48 by 48 in. (ca. 122 by 122 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Circumambulation
2024
oil on paper on canvas
60 by 72 in. (ca. 152,4 by 182,9 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Spirits of the Bog
2024
oil on paper on canvas
60 by 72 in. (ca. 152,4 by 182,9 cm)
Liza Butts
Refugia
2024
oil on paper on canvas
16 by 20 in. (ca. 40,6 by 50,8 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Locus
2024
oil on paper on canvas
16 by 16 in. (ca. 40,6 by 40,6 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Field of Rushes
2023
oil on paper on canvas
48 by 48 in. (ca. 122 by 122 cm)
Liza Butts
Melody Maker
2023
oil on paper
40.25 by 57 in. (ca. 102,2 by 144,8 cm)
Liza Butts
Genius Loci
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 13.625 by 15.75 in. (34,6 by 40 cm)
Liza Butts
Gods of Nights
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 13.125 by 15.5 in. (33,3 by 39,4 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Meridians
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 14.25 by 14.625 in. (36,2 by 37,1 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
An Initiation of Indeterminacy
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 14.325 by 15.75 in. (36,9 by 40 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Threads in the Solution
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 14.625 by 14.125 in. (37,1 by 35,9 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
Finder of Lost Things
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 14 by 14.125 in. (35,6 by 35,9 cm)
private US collection
Liza Butts
A Ferocious Trance
2024
gouache on Yupo paper
framed dims: 14.325 by 15.75 in. (36,9 by 40 cm)
private US collection