Invitations, dates, details — McBride/Dillman, CLEA RSKY, 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, the first Open Studio of 2026. This piece was originally published in Sharon Butler Notebooks on Substack. Subscribe to (or comment on) the monthly Substack Newsletter here.
Hey you,
This month I have a few invitations to share.
- On Friday, January 16, please join me for the opening of “Street Corner Conversations,” a 3-person show at McBride/Dillman on the Lower East Side. See excerpt from the press release below.
- On Sunday, January 18, stop by “Insomnia Project,” an outdoor solo show at CLEA RSKY in Brooklyn, curated by Tommy White and Jim Lee.
- On Saturday, February 7, “Spot On,” a two-person show opens in the main gallery at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, NY. Scroll down for details.
“Street Corner Conversations”
with Sharon Butler, Wendy Fulenwider Liszt, and Ariel Mitchell
at McBride/Dillman
195 Henry Street, Lower East Side, NYC
Opening Reception: January 16, 2025 6-8 pm
On view: January 16 – March 1, 2026
Press release:
Street Corner Conversations brings together Sharon Butler, Wendy Fulenwider Liszt, and Ariel Mitchell—three artists who approach abstraction as an active, embodied way of engaging the world. The exhibition’s title, borrowed from Vanessa Bell’s early foray into abstraction, places the works as voices in dialogue: distinct, overlapping, and rooted in the ongoing evolution of abstract painting. In this context, Street Corner Conversations positions abstraction as a meeting place—an intersection where lines of thought, gesture, and experience converge, overlap, or pass each other by.
The exhibition engages the political dimensions of painting without requiring overt narrative content. The politics of abstraction emerge through self-determination, refusal, attention, and persistence. Historically, women who pursued abstraction did so against cultural and institutional constraints; to claim time, space, and intellectual seriousness was itself a transgressive act. The works on view extend that lineage, asserting abstraction not as withdrawal from the world but as a way of engaging it—through material choices, through the body, and through the slow, accumulative processes of making.
Sharon Butler’s “new casualism” takes up the incomplete, the provisional, and the unfinished as meaningful categories. Her paintings challenge the authority of polish and perfection, foregrounding process as a form of truth-telling. Their casualness is not carelessness, but a refusal of rigid hierarchies. Butler’s paintings underscore the generative instability of making, allowing provisional marks and intuitive decisions to construct a vibrant visual logic.
Wendy Fulenwider Liszt approaches painting as a site of reconstitution. She imagines each work as a body – vulnerable, visceral and alive with presence. Drawing from experiences of impact, imbalance and illumination, she treats paint as both skin and medium, layering translucent and opaque color, then sanding, scraping and carving to reveal fiery forms. Architectural lines, horizons, and anthropomorphic forms drift in and out of legibility as they release themselves from fixed influence.
Ariel Mitchell’s paintings balance abandon with restraint. Working in oil on raw linen, she begins each piece with a white underpainted form that becomes the armature for everything that follows—color, gesture, eruption, and pause. This frees Mitchell from the traditional edges of a canvas; the initial shape provides structure without confinement, allowing the movement of the painting to extend beyond the boundaries of the linen even as the linen remains its support.
Together, these artists share a deep commitment to material, process, and form—each staking out her own vocabulary of abstraction while expanding the possibilities of what the medium can hold. They reveal painting not as an escape from the present, but as a space where thinking can be embodied, where form becomes a mode of conversation, and where the surfaces we encounter mirror the conditions—political, social, and emotional—that shape the world in which they are made. The exhibition suggests that abstraction, far from being detached, remains deeply connected to lived experience. It is an act of presence, insistence, and continual becoming.
Contact: Ashley Dillman at info@mcbridedillman.com
“Insomnia Project” at CLEA RSKY in Brooklyn, curated by Tommy White and Jim Lee, is a little more mysterious, but plywood, canvas, and paint are all involved. The opening will take place at 925 Bergen Street in Brooklyn on Sunday, January 18, 4 – 6 pm. I hope you can join us — just remember to dress warmly. The show will be on view January 18 – March 6, 2026.
“Spot On” at 68 Prince Street Gallery. I’m paired with Jason Travers in the spacious, newly-renovated main gallery at 68 Prince Street in Kingston, NY.
Opening reception: February 7, 5-8 pm
Contact:845.750.7599
On view: February 7 – March 8, 2026
First OPEN STUDIO of 2026: On Wednesday, January 7, Two Coats of Paint is hosting an Open Studio for Resident Artist Sage Tucker-Ketcham. Click here for details. Sage’s residency is Jan 4 – 9, 2026. You can give her a shout on Instagram to set up a studio visit.
Mentoring Update: This semester I’ll be continuing to mentor a 10-artist cohort at the innovative artist-run Canopy Program, and I’ll also be starting a new affiliation with Clark University’s Low Residency MFA Program.
Thanks for reading and much gratitude to everyone who contributed to the Two Coats of Paint Year-end Fund Drive. Because of your support, Two Coats will continue publishing for another year.
As always, images of new work and information about past projects, writing, and exhibitions, can be found on my website at www.sharonlbutler.com. Follow me on Bluesky at @sharonbutler.bsky.social and on Instagram at @sharon_butler.
xx Sharon
p.s. Bonus link: “15 Scenarios That Could Stun the World in 2026” Jonathan’s scenario is #15.
