Two Artists Look From The Inside Out And The Outside In

On one side of Kehler Liddell Gallery is a panoply of children’s faces, caught in a thousand different expressions, a snapshot of both the feelings of dozens of different people at any given moment and the range of emotions that all of us are capable of across time. On the other side of the gallery are more abstract pieces, forms with faces that appear to be mid-transformation, the expression of something more interior.

The photos on one side and the paintings and sculpture on the other are the art of Sven Martson and William Butcher, respectively, who have solo shows — ​“Grow Up!” and ​“Allegories of the Heart and Mind,”— running at Kehler Liddell on Whalley Avenue through Nov. 13.

“Both professionally and by avocation, much of my work in photography has been about children and adolescents. Even before becoming a professional photographer, I would would often take pictures of children playing in various environments. Sometimes when they were aware of my camera they were eager to have their picture taken and would happily pose for me, but just as often they would ignore me and I could freely capture them in their activities without the uneasiness a self-conscious adult might show,” Martson writes in an accompanying statement. 

The pictures in the show are ​“outtakes” from professional photo shoots Martson did at schools. ​“Many schools hired me to take photographs of their activities in an unposed and informal way,” Martson continues. ​“Occasionally I was asked to do portraits or to pose a formal group, but mainly I was free to wander about the campus and photograph what interested me for use in their publications.” Martson often found that his favorite images (which appear in the show) weren’t the ones the schools ended up using. ​“I include them in my show because I think many of them are more expressive than the ones that were published.”

“Growing up can be carefree and happy as well as painful and perplexing,” Martson continues. ​“How one expresses one’s essential core is mostly a product of early environment. I’ve tried to catch the many moods and features of childhood from preschool to college.”

In doing so, Martson also shows a gift for catching those fleeting moments that, when frozen, seem to take on weight and importance. A soccer ball bouncing on someone’s knee, caught in mid-flight, as if the athlete is a wizard, able to levitate objects. A quick roll in leaves that encapsulates more enduring affection. Then there’s a picture of two boys — probably playing? — caught in a pose that gravity would make it impossible to hold. We can’t see their faces, but their bodies convey everything, a certain fragility, fleetingness. If they’re going to fall, they’re falling together.

If Martson, with his lens, is looking from the outside in, maybe we can think of Butcher as looking from the inside out. ​“I am, in my work occupied with visions and images that emanate from the heart and the mind,” Butcher writes in an accompanying statement. ​“It is by a peculiar compulsion that I am driven to bring these to life in a visual form. This is a force of memory that I understand but little and is dependent on a craft” — that is, painting — ​“collectively rooted in a mysterious tradition whose secret and sacred tenets I am constantly in the process of reaffirming.… The language of painting must be painstakingly reinvented and its art continually rediscovered.… It is only in allegory that I can hope to garner a meager understanding of the hidden forces that drive my compulsion to create.” For Butcher, the process of discovering the source of his creativity is tied to the ongoing work of refining his technique as a painter. ​“Unless the painter continues to grow as a draftsman, as a designer and as a colorist, the hands that fashion form fail to nurse it to life.”

In the specific pieces in the show, Butcher explores how, ​“in my artistic eye, I see that we are not only highly distinct individuals, but integral parts of the fabric of the universe.” In the paradoxes that arise from this (can we truly be both?), ​“even though we see in a mirror but dimly, we can get a glimpse and perhaps a revelation of the spiritual nature of human life.”

Some of the titles are indeed laced with religious, and specifically Judeo-Christian, significance. But in the pieces themselves it’s clear that Butcher is going for something more undefined, more universal. The movement he captures in his paintings and sculptures are his own explorations into what makes him (or perhaps anyone) make paintings and sculptures in the first place, coupled with some humility and excitement that he’s not entirely in control of that process. It’s up to him to make the pieces; he doesn’t have to say what they mean, maybe because he knows it isn’t really up to him.

“Grow Up!” and ​“Allegories of the Heart and Mind” run at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Avenue, through Nov. 13. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.