Cockeysville’s Sarah Butcher’s artwork ‘clear and diverse’
The landscape is haunting. It shows a barn in somber colors with a brown sky. The artwork resembles a painting Andrew Wyeth might have created.
“Lonely. Worn. But still really beautiful,” said Sarah Butcher, the first featured artist at Osteria Da Amedo, a new bistro and wine bar on Exeter Street in Little Italy.
Butcher’s “The Barn on Long Green Road” is a work of art she created from a photo of a dairy barn in Baldwin, Md. “I tried to do justice to what I saw,” she explained.
“Her work is elegant, clear and diverse,” added Bridget Edwards, manager of Osteria Da Amedo, who organizes the guest artist exhibits. “I like her style.”
Sarah Butcher created the kind of artwork she was seeking for the Osteria’s exhibits. Butcher’s range of work encompasses landscape, portrait and still life. Twenty of her pieces are covering the exposed brick walls of the bistro which is owned by Ahmad Ebrahimpour.
Butcher’s “Blue” is a digital art nouveau piece. A portrait in hues of blue, she explained that it was inspired by Alphonse Mucha, the Czech painter and decorative artist from the late 19th and early 20th century. “Blue” (pictured above) hangs next to a still life, “Book about Mary with Fruit,” which uses bright, lemon colored fruit to contrast the somber book cover with the words, Jesus and Mary.
“You discover the world by studying art,” said Butcher, who employed a process she calls “photo – subtractive” to create much of what is displayed in the exhibit. She will add to a photo by drawing on it, or layering it in a computer program for photography. “I might add color, like the brown sky in ‘Barn’ or I will paint on a dark background instead of a white one,” she said. Butcher exposes different parts of the photograph and erases other areas. Then she will print it out and work on it again.
Butcher also paints by hand on a selection of her digital photos.
“I can’t imagine not doing this,” Butcher said. “I love it. I like to create. I like the process. I like thinking about it. I cannot imagine not being actively working on art.”
A Cockeysville resident, Sarah Butcher is the chairwoman of the art department at Maryvale Preparatory School where she teaches digital media and studio art. A graduate of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland where she earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art, Butcher has also published art and illustrations in several literary magazines and shown her work in shows with other artists. The Osteria Da Amedo exhibit is her first solo show.
Butcher said “Art is a reflection of the human experience.” She has been creating art since she was 3 years old, “I would cut paper up in the living room. By high school, I was drawing portraits at the Johns Hopkins University Spring Fair.”
Her landscapes, portraits and still lifes are on display at the Osteria Da Amedeo through July 8. Sarah Butcher’s artwork can also be seen on her website.
Caryn Coyle writes about arts, culture and food for the websites CBS Baltimore and Welcome to Baltimore, Hon. Her fiction has been published in a dozen literary journals including Gargoyle, JMWW, The Little Patuxent Review, Loch Raven Review, Midway Journal, The Journal (Santa Fe) and the anthology City Sages: Baltimore from City Lit Press. She won the 2009 Maryland Writers Association Short Fiction Award, third prize in the first Delmarva Review Short Story Contest, 2011 and honorable mentions for her fiction from the Missouri Writer’s Guild (2011) and the St. Louis Writer’s Guild (2012).