Tricia Butski

Tricia Butski is a fine artist and educator living and working in Buffalo, NY. Butski studied traditional drawing and oil painting, receiving her BFA from Fredonia State University in 2013 and her MFA from the University at Buffalo in 2015.[1] She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Buffalo Arts Studio. She also works as an adjunct professor at Erie Community College and Fredonia State University, where she teaches drawing, painting and digital design courses.[2]

Butski’s work has been included in several group exhibitions, most recently in shows at Main Street Arts in Clifton Springs, NY (2018), the Trimain Center in Buffalo (2018) and the Niagara Arts and Cultural Center in Niagara Falls (2017). She will be featured in an upcoming solo show at the Nichols School. Her most recent solo exhibitions include shows at the Revolution Gallery in Buffalo (2018), the Roz Steiner Art Gallery in Batavia (2017) and the Buffalo Arts Studio (2016).

Butski has also participated in public arts collaborations, working on murals on Niagara St. and Clinton St. in Buffalo, NY and on 3rd St. in Niagara Falls, NY.

Butski’s recent works have primarily been portraiture, and her exploration into the blurred lines between realistic representation of her subjects and abstractionism. She notes in her artist statement that her recent work and choice of medium are visual representations of the unknown:

“Through drawings rendered in charcoal, my recent work examines issues related to memory by exploring its limitations and aestheticizing the instability inherent in portraiture. The work allows the viewer to enter the subconscious space between remembering and forgetting. The figures and faces, which have been distorted through a repetitive layering process, manipulate our sense of familiarity. The original image becomes fragmented through this process, a conceptual procedure that corresponds to the experience of forgetting the semblance of the face, the body and the subject.”[3]