JOANNE THOMSON
Leonard Butt is a complicated and private man with a marvellous sense of humour. He creates exquisite sculptures in clay that speak a language full of metaphor. The colours of ash and stone adorn fish, houses, asparagus, wings and kimonos that Butt sculpts in clay and then raku fires.
He speaks of his process as a connection with the ebb and flow of life. A process he feeds, gathers, follows and watches while it ripens. He states: “With age you start to understand it better and respect it. The art becomes more true, more honest, more personally significant. … The spiritual is not the intention. The work could become contrived if I attempted to make something conscious that eludes me.”
He goes on: “It is important to raise something personally significant to a conscious level through the process without too much analysis or control. And often there is a humorous aspect to the development of the work.”
The fish in his works are metaphors for his process. They travel in water, the equivalent of the unconscious in Jungian psychology, skilfully navigating the unconscious and mining the mystery of it. Leonard Butt is able to laugh at himself and his humanity.
In his living room are two sculptures of fish and kimonos, one with a fish head vertically extending from the neck of the kimono, and the other with the fish horizontal, the head just emerging from one arm and the tail from the other. Butt explains that these sculptures are about himself and his wife, Marnie. The male has his head out the top, brazen and obvious. The other is the female, transverse across the sculpture, filling out the “house” of the robe.
In another sculpture a man carries a fish and a woman the house. The man is the provider, working outside of the home, whereas the woman carries the day-to-day sense of family and home. However, as Butt explains, everything is blurring now as he approaches a year-long sabbatical from his teaching position and he and his wife are new empty-nesters. He is off to Portugal this year to study bronze casting, entering another realm of sculptural maturity.
Butt has often shown at local juried shows where his sculptures have taken many awards. He has also shown with the Red Gallery in Oak Bay and recently accepted an invitation to show with the Madrona Gallery in downtown Victoria. He is a man with a quiet, complex and evolving plan that will emerge as he goes forward. He is not in a hurry. I look forward to watching evidence of his journey in the works he creates.
And he will be watchful too, because, as he states, “longing can become risky when it is enacted,” and the wings of transcendence may be laying in wait to steal the reward away. Yet in my opinion, they could just as easily be waiting to deliver it.
Leonard Butt’s work can be seen on the Madrona Gallery website madronagallery.com.
Joanne Thomson is a visual artist in Victoria. She teaches courses in painting, drawing and art-making as a spiritual practice. Visit joannethomson.com or morrisgallery.ca to see her works.
