About My Work
I'm a painter and I make improvised abstract compositions.
The forms and structures in my paintings begin their lives as doodles in an A5 notebook. Working with whatever “pops out” in these initial drawings helps resist the urge to impose meaning before the work has had a chance to form. My role is to take these half-formed sketches that arrive from the ether, on the journey toward becoming fully-fledged paintings, allowing them to grow into themselves along the way.
My work and approach are no doubt shaped by many experiences. I sometimes wonder if growing up in Leixlip, Co. Kildare – on the edge of the Dublin commuter belt during the 1980 and '90s – has subconsciously influenced the kinds of forms that emerge when I draw. The glow of orange streetlights on concrete walls, roads and buildings gave the suburban landscape a strange, otherworldly quality when I was young that has likely shaped my sense of colour.
Rave and dance music arrived in the early '90s, just as I approached my early teens. The music's repetitive beats, along with its visual culture – laser light shows and strange, grainy video footage of euphoric dancers—have no doubt left some kind of imprint on my aesthetic sensibility. The exotic patterns on '90s football jerseys were my introduction to textile art. Later on, while studying Electronic Engineering in college, I spent a lot of time staring at circuit diagrams, trying to figure out how current circulates. I sometimes wonder if this, too, has had an influence on the compositions I tend to make today.
Many artistic influences have shaped my work. Philip Guston and Henri Matisse have been significant to me, as has Outsider and Vernacular Art, including children's art. Watching my son sit down and churn out ten beautifully strange drawings in a row, then get up and wander off, has been as much of an influence as any painter. I see painting as a fresh, generative activity—an open-ended arena for compositional invention and play.
Biography
Mark Butler grew up in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, and studied Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin. In 2006, he left Ireland and spent the next 14 years living and working in China, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
While in the UK, he studied art at Byam Shaw – Central Saint Martins, London for a year. He later earned a degree in Visual Arts with a focus on Painting from Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada in 2013. Since then, he has maintained an active studio practice, participated in group exhibitions, and held a solo show at Dynamo Arts Association in Vancouver in 2018. During this time, he also got married, started a family, and spent three years on Vancouver Island while working in the public health system.
In 2020, he returned to Ireland with his family and now lives and works in Leixlip, Co. Kildare.
Supported by Kildare County Council
2024 Art Acts Award
