Sharon Butler's work explores the tension between exacting, mechanical processes -- often digital and screen-based -- and the humanism inherent in images and objects made by hand. She likes the slippage between the two. Recent paintings and drawings capture her perceptions of New York, focusing on the light, space, geometry, and her experience of the city.

In 2007, fascinated by art, writing, and the possibility of new digital platforms, she founded Two Coats of Paint, a blogazine that focuses primarily on painting in NYC. The project has expanded to include a small residency program, podcast, small press, and other initiatives. From 2016-20, she became obsessed with drawing on her phone, posting one digital drawing each day on Instagram. The visual language developed in these tiny digital images -- the "Good Morning Drawings" -- eventually became the basis for the paintings she continues to make today. 

Her solo exhibitions in New York at Jennifer Baahng Gallery, Theodore Art, and Pocket Utopia have been written about in The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, artcritical, The New Criterion, The James Kalm Report, Time Out New York, Tussle, and New York Magazine. She has received awards and residencies from Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Connecticut State University, Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Pocket Utopia, and Counterproof Press at the University of Connecticut. 

She lives in Queens, NY, works in Brooklyn, and is currently affiliated with the MFA Program at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Sharon Butler Notebooks, a monthly newsletter related to her studio practice, is her most recent undertaking. Sign up here.

CV of Exhibitions and awards
CV of Writing and other projects

For a more detailed biography, visit Wikipedia. 

Image: In the studio at 20 Jay Street, Brooklyn. January 2024.