BUTTERBAUGH: The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit

36"w x 48"h acrylic on canvas, 1998

"Most of us contain our 'unquenchable inner fire' by our concerns for how we look, how we fit in, whether we are doing it right. But, there are times when the fire erupts anyway - even when we are uncomfortable with how it looks."

For Sale

EYE on the SPIRIT

These paintings show the artist's spirit - where his consciousness (thoughts, feelings, ideas, hunches, intuition) is at a particular point in time.

Trained as an architect, on the one hand Butterbaugh sees these paintings as abstract. On the other, he sees shapes, lines, color, and texture, the sense data of visual form. Site planners (see Kevin Lynch's writing) and architects use knowledge of this to create a particular kind of experience. One vivid example is Louis Kahn's Unitarian Church in Rochester, NY. He wanted to create the experience of tranquility for the person sitting in the sanctuary. His solution was to have no shadows, the presence of which create mystery.

Any creator (artist) interested in the experience that people will have in the presence of their work are highly attuned to this information and its effects.

Proceeding from visual information one can arrive at one of several interpretations for the array of light and suggested form on the canvas. These paintings are interpretations in terms of a state of mind - many about what it is like to be in the creative process itself.

A creator must be able to abide a lot of questions before he discovers the central principle(s) which can then generate the solution which meets all the criteria that the created idea had to satisfy - that value that generated all the energy to engage the creative process in the first place.

Interestingly this is true of the process of creating an integrated philosophy of life and living. For a look at how Butterbaugh took on that process, see www.heldhightorch.com.

BUTTERBAUGH

The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit

EYE on the SPIRIT

"I Create" - the course

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