Eric Butcher (born 1970) is a contemporary British abstract painter known for his reductive, processed-based approach.
Butcher read philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, graduating in 1994 and completed an MA in Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art in 2001. He has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally with shows in Germany, Italy, Australia and the USA.(2007). “Underground”, p.78. Centre for Art International Research, Liverpool, . He currently shows with Toomey Tourell gallery, San Francisco,Toomey-Tourell Fine Art "Eric Butcher" Galerie Robert Drees in HannoverGalerie Robert Drees "Eric Butcher" and Patrick Heide Contemporary Art.Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, Collaborating Artists
He has received awards from the Arts Council, England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He has also held an Arts Institute at Bournemouth Research Fellowship (now the AUBUniversity College Bournemouth”.) and the Centre for Arts International Research/Liverpool College of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University, Multiple Perspectives Fellowship (2007).
In 2002 Butcher was the recipient of Art London: Visual Arts Development Award, and Artist in Residence, Benson-Sedgwick Engineering, London from 2008 to 2010.
Butcher was shortlisted in the final Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2017Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017, published by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, London (texts: Anita Taylor, David Dibosa, Helen Legg, Michael Simpson) (now Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize) alongside artists such as Barbara Walker (artist) and selected by writer/curator, David Dibosa; Helen Legg, director of Tate Liverpool (then director of Spike Island Artspace); and Michael Simpson (painter). In 2020 Butcher exhibited Sweet Heresy, his second solo show at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, which coincided with the release of Time Trial, a newly published 160-page hardback catalogue of his recent work.”Time Trial”, Eric Butcher .
In recent years Butcher has been shortlisted for the Derwent Art Prize 2022, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024, the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, and the John Ruskin Prize and Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in 2025.
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Early life and education Eric Butcher was born in Singapore in 1970 to a Dutch mother and British father. Shortly after he was born the family moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and then settled in the UK in Hampshire, England in 1974. After leaving school at 16 he spent two formative years studying art at Basingstoke College of Technology, after which he undertook A Levels at evening classes and eventually found his way to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, reading philosophy and graduating in 1994. After several years of developing his work in relative isolation he returned to art school and in 2001 he completed an MA in Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art. He has worked for the past twenty years from a rural setting in his studio in Oxfordshire"Eric Butcher: Richness in Rightness", p.22. Paul Carey-Kent . a converted barn and a place of tranquility, creativity and precision.
Career
Endgame (2020—present) Endgame is the latest body of work from Eric Butcher. The work marks a significant and pivotal development in Butcher's practice, reflecting a deepening investigation into his legacy and a deliberate dismantling of his earlier pieces.
Conceptual Framework
For years, Butcher's practice has involved the incremental building up, and stripping back, of paint over a surface. With Endgame the artist has pulled apart his former practice, peeling away the layers of paint from their supports and re-presenting the resulting fragments—an approach that now informs all of his future work ("He intends to use only materials already available in the studio, repurposing and recycling without consuming new resources").https://www.patrickheide.com/artists/eric-butcher Set within sheets of glass, like scientific specimens, these fragments collect the 'natural history' of his creative past.
Endgame will use his existing materials as a resource for as long as possible, until there is no longer anything left to create from.
Early work Butcher's earliest exhibited works were compositions of oil, resin and spray paint on large, tablet-like MDF supports. The combination of painted surface and exaggerated depth of the support made the works deliberately and obviously three-dimensional objects – an ‘attempt to deny the viewer the desire to see the surface as anything other than surface’.(2003). “Arcs + Surfaces, A Conversation with Eric Butcher”, p.11. Vertigo Gallery, London, . This composed physical presence was inherent in even the most restrained of Butcher's works, as William Packer would go on to say in his introduction to Butcher's 2005 catalogue, Carbon Candy, ‘even when hung conventionally, flat to the wall, they remain obviously and directly physical’.”Carbon Candy”, p.4. Vertigo Gallery, London, . Although characterised by their appearance – an abstract ‘accretion of paint, resin and various other fluids’(2003). “Arcs + Surfaces, A Conversation with Eric Butcher”, p.12. Vertigo Gallery, London, . - their manufacture was faithful to the rules that govern Butcher's creative process.Eric Butcher "statement" . Butcher has said of his practice that ‘the application or subtraction of paint as a set of processes is achieved through a variety of continually evolving techniques which draw attention to the physical properties of my materials’,Eric Butcher "statement” . a result that would be most clearly manifest in his subsequent metal works. The introduction of metal as a support revolutionised Butcher's creative output and his approach to the act of painting, ‘it may just be a flat piece of metal... But they all have little nicks, edges and imperfections... the result is an accumulation of what I have learnt about that surface’.
Philosophy and approach to painting ‘The application or subtraction of paint’ in Butcher's practice is executed through the use of ‘a metal blade drawn across the painting's surface’”Definite Article, Objects and Surfaces, Eric Butcher”, p.7. Vertigo Gallery, London, . pulling a thin transparent monochrome of oil and resin over the metal support, ‘this procedure is then repeated and repeated, building up a surface of accumulated residues'. The outcome of each painting is determined by ‘variations in colour modulation’ and largely ‘by the physical characteristics of the support’.Eric Butcher 'Paint is registered in vertical and horizontal bands across the surface of the metal plane, with areas of metal left unpainted and its polished face exposed to the viewer. the colour is omitted and the bare aluminium emerges. As a result, two rhythms arise; on the one hand the colour fields are interrupted by sections of contrasting colour, and on the other hand we have the various degrees of paint application, which range from impasto to diaphanous. They completely cover the aluminium, yet also let it shimmer through'.Krämer, Harald (2013). "Bildwerke", p. 23. Galerie Robert Drees.
Although Butcher has a uniform approach to each work, they nevertheless differ vastly from one another as the artist may encounter subtle material differences in the surface of each extrusion; burrs in the metal itself or unexpected variations in the applied paint wash.Sheldon, Julie (2007). “Underground”, p.32. Centre for Art International Research, Liverpool, . Almost every piece will seek to preserve some element of the metal as well, ‘the aluminium asserts itself as the artwork's true substance’. As Butcher seeks to articulate the surfaces of aluminium structures, he does so not only through the repetitive layers of colour application, but also through the preservation of the support's original condition (before his intervention) – both make for an overall representation of that particular structure's history.
In the 2019 catalogue, Time Trial, the artist describes his repetitive, quasi-mechanised, approach as exposing a quintessentially human quality, one where the 'limitations and failures of the human hand are writ large'Butcher, Eric (2019). "Time Trial", p. 107. Galerie Robert Drees, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, compared with the perfection of machine production. The painted surface, which registers any deviation from its 'flat, featureless monochrome is predicated upon error or impurity, human or material'. In this way, the artist describes his practice as representing a 'glorification of error'. These 'errors' occur when the 'subtle shifts in the pressure applied, inflexion or angle of the stripping blade leave their traces in the shifts of consistency and density of paint.'Butcher, Eric (2019). "Time Trial", p. 58. Galerie Robert Drees, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, 'The finished piece represents an accumulation of what [he has] learnt about that particular surface through successive applications and subtractions'. While the rules that govern Butcher's process have been fundamental, these rules have been relaxed in recent years as the creative act and process become 'both a means (to the object) and an end in itself'.Butcher, Eric (2019). "Time Trial", p. 84. Galerie Robert Drees, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art,
Site-specific installations For the Material Witness exhibition at Toomey Tourell gallery in 2010, Butcher exhibited fourteen of his painted aluminium extrusions.Baker, Kenneth (March 13, 2010). “Butcher Shines at Toomey Tourell”. San Francisco Chronicle, p.E-1. Hung vertically and spaced asymmetrically with a measured and careful distance between one another, the display articulated Butcher's increasing awareness of, and preoccupation with, ‘installation’ in creating a total cohesive experience rather than an isolated object. As Kenneth Baker, in his San Francisco Chronicle review, wrote of the work's interaction with the space it occupied, ‘to walk this piece is to compose and recompose it through observation. Its geometry and built-in illusionism dictate that it cannot be seen whole’. This can also be said of Butcher's curatorial practice, where, as in the Definite Article exhibition curated by the artist himself,”Definite Article, Objects and Surfaces, Eric Butcher”, p.3. Vertigo Gallery, London, . he deals with the scale and arrangement of works by Roger Ackling, Marc Vaux and Cathy Wade, as well as his own. Butcher's attempts within his own works in that exhibition to, ‘engage the space around the painted surface’ were similarly factors that he encountered in his curation of the exhibition as a whole, ‘each of the artists... employs a range of techniques to encourage the viewer to engage with the work physically’.