Jim Butler works with forms of everyday displacements and enlargements in his paintings. David Ebony writes in Art in America "He chooses an object usually a cheap toy or a piece of trash picked up off the street. Using traditional methods of oil painting on primed canvas and relying only on his powers of observation, without the help of photographs or grids, Butler carefully transposes the subject into two dimensions. While faithfully rendering, the objects are transformed by the artist’s subtle inflections of light, shade and composition. The results are quirky, intense images that seem removed from conventional still-life painting. Butler isolates and centres each image, surrounding it with a hazy border of bright white. Painted shadows suggest sculptural depth, but it is hard to say where and how the objects are grounded. At times they seem to glow in an otherworldy ether. With tongue in cheek, he seems to elevate his abject subject matter to the level of icon"

EDUCATION

1980
M.F.A Indiana University, Bloomington

1979
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture

1978
B.F.A Rhode Island School of Design

1977
Yale Norfolk Summer School of Painting and Music

1981 - present
Professor at Middlebury College, Vermont

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2007
Corrider Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland

2005
Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany

2001
Roger Smith Gallery, New York, USA
Buchmann Galerie, Cologne, Germany

2000
Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden

1999
Corridor Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland

1998
Buchmann Galerie, Cologne, Germany

1997
Bravin Post Lee Gallery, New York, USA

1996
Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden

1994
Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
Bravin Post Lee Gallery, New York, USA

1990
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, USA

1986
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, USA

1984
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, USA
Coburn Gallery, University of Vermont, Burlington, USA

1983
Johnson Gallery, Middlebury Collage, Middlebury, USA


SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2007
Affect/Effect-Adventures In Glass, Museum of Northewest Art, La Conner, WA, USA
Ho Hum - Come All Ye Faithful, Bravin and Lee Projects, New York, NY, USA

2006
Painting, Lars Bohman Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Horizon Line With A Mouse, Buchmann Galleri, Berlin, Germany

2005
Yankee Love and Latin Doodle, Galleri Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany

2003
Art Walk Benefit, Custom House, New York, NY, USA

2001
To Be A Mirror: Portraits by Six Artists, Eugene Binder Gallery, New York
Double Vision, Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York

2000
Gangurin The Corridor, Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland

1998
Composite Modular, Central Fine Arts Gallery, New York
Humanoid-Genvese, Sullivan Gallery Boston
New Paintings, Central Fine Arts Gallery, New York

1997
Flight #20 / Spin Off, 21 Murray St., New York

1996
Realism After 7 AM, Edward Hopper House, Nyack
Referencing innocence / Not, Weingart Galleries, Occidental College, Los Angeles

1995
Small Works, Adam Baumgold Fine Art, New York
Its Only Rock and Roll in Current Contemporary Art, Tuscon Museum of Art

1994
Dyad, Sauce Brooklyn, New York
Paintings and Unrelated Stories, Mustard, Brooklyn, New York

1993
Any Given Day, John Post Lee Gallery, New York
Medium Messages, Wooster Gardens, New York
Summer Exhibition, Sylvia Schmidt Gallery, New Orleans

1992
Still Life Today - Recapturing it´s essence, Scott Alan Gallery, New York
Summer Pleasures, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

1991
Ho Hum, Come All Ye Faithful, The Ornament Show, John Post Lee Gallery, New York
Against The Grain - Images of American Art, 1960-1990, Southern Alleghany Museum of Art, Loretto New York Collection, Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo
Persistence of Vision, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York
12th Anniversary Show, P.S 1 Gallery, New York