Valerie Butters Uses Her Intuition

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Valerie Butters, “Une fille, c'est une fleur,” 2016

acrylic on canvas, 48” x 96”

West Coast artist Valerie Butters gave herself a treat last year – a full year away from her commercial practice so she could explore her creativity without the demands of the marketplace. She had felt pulled in many directions, with people telling her what she should be doing. She needed to understand what she wanted to do.

Her creative sabbatical, as she calls it, is over. But Butters says her work, including four large floral paintings on view at the Pousette Gallery in Vancouver until May 27 as part of a two-person show with Catherine Young Bates, is now more intuitive and gestural.

“You can tell a true intuitive gesture from something that’s more contrived,” she says. “I’m trying to get away from the contrived side of it.”

Butters, who is also represented by the Avenue Art Gallery in Victoria and the Tutt Street Gallery in Kelowna, is inspired by Quebec’s Automatiste painters, who were, in turn, influenced by surrealism and processes that emphasized the flow of consciousness. “It’s discovering your personal mark,” says Butters. “And that’s all energy that comes from inside you.”

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Valerie Butters, “Expressive Resolution,” 2017

mixed media on canvas, 60” x 48”

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Valerie Butters, “Sing It, Say It, Write It,” 2017

acrylic on canvas, 48” x 60”

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Butters grew up in a family of avid gardeners, including her father, a fighter pilot. She had a peripatetic childhood as he moved around with the Canadian military, and eventually ended up in Montreal, where she studied at the Saidye Bronfman School of Fine Arts, drawn there by its emphasis on studio production.

She is now based in Pemberton, B.C., north of Vancouver, where she moved seven years ago after meeting her husband. She has had some setbacks. When her son, now four, was an infant, she fell while on holiday in Mexico, badly injuring her feet.

She uses her whole body when she paints, often with long brushes while perched on a ladder, so it was difficult to work. “There are a lot of artists that work from the wrist, almost like handwriting,” she says. “But gestural painting comes from the elbow and the shoulder. So you’re really putting your body into it.”