Artist Statement

I make abstract paintings that often feature emergent pictorial forms, shaped by rhythm and compositional play. My process begins by making small, improvised drawings in a notebook. I watch for forms and compositions that feel compelling, and these become starting points for paintings.

I think of my practice as an ongoing activity of making that takes place within the conditions of ordinary suburban life. These conditions shape the psychological atmosphere the work grows out of, without dictating its content. The routines and rhythms of daily life register in the work as impulses toward vitality and the emergence of something new. Likewise, the ambient solitude of nocturnal suburbia generates impulses in the work that move outward, towards connection or transmission. All of this finds expression in the behaviour of the work itself.

My paintings function like compositional packets of energy. Meaning resides in the work's embodied behaviour rather than narrative. This way of working embraces emergence and the joy of making things up. For me, this is a form of freedom, allowing the work to assert its autonomy and unfold within the generative terrain of the suburban commuter belt.

About

Mark Butler’s aesthetic sensibility developed through a range of visual and cultural influences, some of which are outlined below.

Growing up in Leixlip, Co. Kildare in the 1980s and ’90s, the soft Martian glow of orange streetlights on concrete roads and structures left a lasting imprint on his sense of colour and atmosphere in painting. Early encounters with Catholic iconography, including a Sacred Heart of Jesus picture lit by a single red light bulb at his grandparents' house, showed him that images could possess a strange and heightened presence.

In his early adolescence, he discovered rave and dance music through pirate radio, bootleg cassette tapes, and late-night videos. Fragments of this underground, counter-cultural world seeped into his suburban existence and fostered a sense of emergent discovery that still informs his approach today. Butler later studied Electronic Engineering, where he drew circuit diagrams by hand. The experience of drawing and understanding these structured systems has helped shape his sense of composition and how elements within a closed system relate.

Alongside these personal experiences, Butler’s work is informed by a range of artistic influences. He is drawn to Modernist artists for their formal inventiveness and their openness to new pictorial possibilities. He is also interested in outsider and vernacular practices for the rigorous independence with which these artists pursue a personal logic. These influences inform Butler's work, which favours compositional vitality and an emergent visual language over narrative concerns. He maintains an active studio practice in which his work continues to evolve.

Supported by Kildare County Council

• 2024 Arts Act Award

• 2025 Arts Act Award