Abstract from  Legacy of a Painter
Exhibition Catalog, Yellowstone Art Museum, July 1998
by Gordon McConnell, Senior Curator at the Yellowstone Art Museum

The legacy of an artist is found in the body of his work.  Montana artist Freeman Butts, who died at his home in Livingston on May 23 this year, left behind an enormous and important artistic legacy.  In a career that spanned half a century, from the late 1940's through the 1990's, Freeman Butts created thousands of drawings, watercolors and acrylic paintings on paper; sculpture in ceramics and bronze; and hundreds of oil and acrylic paintings on canvas.

A big, exuberant man who reveled in all of the sensuous sights and pleasures of life, Freeman Butts embraced early on the vigorous brushwork and gesturalism of action painting.  Looseness, fluidity of line, high energy and speed of execution characterized all of his work.  Freeman painted some non-objective canvases, but the vast majority of his work is figurative -- inspired by the female nude and the landscape.

The boldly manipulated figure/ground relationships, supple paint handling, and human interest contained in these rich paintings mark the summit of Freeman Butt's creative career.  He certainly thought so, and he held a group of twenty two of these figure paintings together for this exhibition at the new Yellowstone Art Museum during late summer, 1998.  Combined with figure paintings from earlier years, and other paintings completed more recently, the exhibition provides the opportunity to more fully appreciate the legacy of this great Montana artist.

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