William C. Butcher

I am in my work, occupied with visions and images that emanate from the heart and the mind. It is by a peculiar compulsion that I am driven to bring these to life in a visual form. This is a force of memory that I understand but little and is dependent on a craft collectively rooted in a mysterious tradition whose secret and sacred tenets I am constantly in the process of reaffirming. Therefore, the language of painting must be painstakingly reinvented and it’s art continually rediscovered. It is a language whose vocabulary is based on a vision of ideal forms, an ideal that is illusive and impossible to reach. It is only in allegory that I can hope to garner a meager understanding of the hidden forces that drive my compulsion to create. What I do not see dimly but clearly is that unless the painter continues to grow as a draftsman, as a designer and as a colorist, the hands that fashion form fail to nurse it to life. The tragedy for the artist is when poorly disciplined hands hold, lifeless, the dreams of the heart and the mind.

William C. Butcher is a graduate of the Drake University School of Fine Art where he earned BFA and MFA degrees in painting. He studied painting and drawing with internationally recognized artists Cornelis Ruhtenberg , Jules Kirschenbaum and Gaylord Torrence. William went on to teach visual art including drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture at Suffield Academy in Suffield Ct. where he chaired the Visual Art Department for nearly forty years. In his Time at Suffield Academy William oversaw the design and construction of new visual art studios and a sculpture workshop that doubled as a technical theater workshop. William also did extensive theatrical set design and construction and served as a technical director for school productions. As a prolific painter and sculptor William has exhibited widely, received numerous awards and has art work in private collections in New York, Boston, Kansas City, Phoenix Arizona, Suffield and New Haven Connecticut, Cologne Germany, London England, Jamaica, Bermuda and Japan.