THE VISUAL ARTWORKER

By Alan Singer on August 19, 2015

“You Are Now Experiencing Perception"

The Geisel Gallery-Rochester, NY

 

…This is your chance to see a body of artwork that is all of one piece - each of the twenty-five or more works support one another and this represents a moment in a young artist's career when he can put together a show without fear, or having to fit into someone else's categories.  That is a very good thing for Bradley Butler, because categories will not do justice to this artwork - which is too poetic to fit neatly into a box anyhow…(Read entire review, here)

 

ROCHESTER CITY NEWSPAPER

By Rebecca Rafferty on September 17, 2014

“Grasping at Mist and Debris” Review of The Opposite of Concrete

Main Street Arts-Clifton Springs, NY

 

…Butler's work has become even more engaging as it became even less representational and less anxious. By using his curiosity to push through his dread, he seems to have found security and freedom in losing sight of shore… (Read entire review, here)

 

THE VISUAL ARTWORKER

By Alan Singer on July 1, 2013

“Painting is Alive and Well” (Excerpt from review)

Gallery r-Rochester, NY

 

Mr. Butler has an impressionist/expressionist message to offer about atmospheres and landscapes that are just far enough away to be out-of-focus, so they hang on the wall and vibrate ever-so-slightly.

 

ARTSICLE.COM

Interview by Ceci Menchetti on April 2, 2012

“Bradley Butler: Contemplating the Mysterious”

Artsicle-New York, NY

 

Bradley Butler wants his work to floor you. Literally. A former graphic designer, he has hopes that his eerie “dreamscape” painting will disorient viewers and cause some dizziness. Working out of a peaceful studio in Upstate New York,… (Read entire interview, here)

 

 

THE VISUAL ARTWORKER

By Alan Singer on October 6, 2010

“Stepping Out for Art” (Excerpt from review)

Joy Gallery-Rochester, NY

 

Recent graduates take over the Joy Gallery on Rochester’s west side for a two person essay on the state of abstract art in a show titled “Hard Work”. Here lyrical layers of color in deeper tones by Bradley Butler rub shoulders with hard edge grids of color by Rick Minard. Butler has a knack for improvisation and the experiments can be dark, poetic and oceanic. Minard on the other hand is more analytical, precise and buoyant in his color choices.

 

 

ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE

Sept. 19, 2010

“Artist Spotlight”

Joy Gallery – Rochester, NY

 

 

ROCHESTER CITY NEWSPAPER

By Rebecca Rafferty on January 21, 2009

“Future Studies” (Exerpt from review)

Gallery r- Rochester, NY

 

Another artist concerned with our forsaking the Earth is RIT’s Bradley Butler, whose “A Day at the Beach, 2″ in acrylic and conte gives only the vaguest suggestion of sand and sky, which is almost completely overcome by sweeps of black wind and tongues of flame rising from the earth. I saw and loved his work last year in his solo show at the Rochester Contemporary Lab Space.

 

 

ROCHESTER CITY NEWSPAPER

By Rebecca Rafferty on Jun. 18th, 2008

“The Future Consequences of Neglect”

Rochester Contemporary LAB Space-Rochester, NY

 

Art does not occur in a vacuum. Artists are often sensitive to cultural concerns, and some of the best art has served as a visual record of social and political climates. Bradley Butler’s art forecasts the result of actual climate change, reflecting that the political scene is finally giving some acceptance to long-standing alarms from scientists. It’s a heavy issue, and humans are faced with the duty to quickly turn around the damage that we’ve done. In acting as though we are higher organisms living on the planet, and not of the same stuff as everything else, we have largely estranged ourselves from our home, and the result of this horrifying concept is cropping up again and again in art these days. M. Night Shyamalan’s mysterious new film, “The Happening,” seems to be about nature rejecting humans, disposing of us like the destructive virus that we maybe are. In “The Future Consequences of Neglect,” now on display in the Rochester Contemporary LAB Space, Butler’s provocative paintings appear to be about nature reclaiming us, taking away our privilege to be human as we currently know it.

 

Many of Butler’s canvases depict human-animal hybrid creatures, dubbed with likewise hybrid names (i.e. Homodus Vulgaris), all of whom seem bewildered by their strange existence and confront the viewer with intense eyes. The paintings that most interested me were the nearly abstracted, very timely apocalyptic seascapes, for which Butler employed a simple palette of white, red, brown, blue, black, and gray. Skillfully vague hints at ocean and land are absorbed by the kinetic sweep of black in the foreground, and the viewer is left with the sinking inkling of being caught in a crucial shift. The small show challenges our role as the inattentive and greedy keepers of this garden planet. At last, the audience is listening.