NOTE: On Saturday, February 21, 2 pm. please join artist and Two Coats of Paint publisher Sharon Butler and artist Jason Travers for a conversation at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, NY. They will be discussing their new paintings, which are on view at the gallery in “Spot On” through March 8, 2026. Free and open to the public. UPDATE: A transcript of the conversation is posted here.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Spots aren’t really like perfect circles. They’re less fussy and more versatile, conveying a sense of motion, the illusion of three-dimensional space, and restless unpredictability. They are also exempt from the requirements of representation, which encourages and enables a painter to address philosophical questions about control, authorship, and the relationship between intention and accident – as the artists in this show do.
In the Main Gallery, Sharon Butler soaks raw canvas with paint in irregularly shaped geometries to suggest dissolution. The delicate forms, brushed and drawn, evoke a sense of vulnerability. Inspired by hurricane devastation in the coastal town where she grew up, her process reflects the way we absorb experience and environment into memory. Jason Travers’ paintings have a hint of the elegiac in their use of deep color and the illusion of light. The effects of the small spots that cover his work take time to unfold; they could be at a distance or in front of your eyes.
“Spot On,” curated by Alan Goolman, 68 Prince Street Gallery, 68 Prince Street, Kingston, NY. through March 8, 2026
About the author: Jonathan Stevenson is a New York-based policy analyst, editor, and writer, contributing to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Politico, among other publications, and a regular contributor to Two Coats of Paint.
