Butch Skynear

“My forms are based heavily on natural phenomena and I count wind, water, and rock formations among the principal sources for the imagery in my artwork, especially in my sculpture.”

“Sometimes my work is representational, at other times it assumes complete abstraction. Sometimes there is the interpenetration of both.”

Skynear was born of immigrant Polish parents who settled in Colorado, where his father worked in the silver mines. He grew up amidst a spectacular landscape of tremendous scale and intense, variegated color – jagged peaks, steep, narrow ravines, wildly folded and discontinuous rock layers of weathered sedimentary rock. These sights filled him with a sense of fantastic force and vitality.

He also became fascinated with the look of the mining settlements scattered throughout the region. They were odd places, many of them eerie ghost towns, jumbles of metal and wood, haphazardly constructed, clinging precariously to some mountainside outcropping.

These images gained in childhood infuse his artwork up to the present day. Skynear has always been desirous of using a wide variety of materials in creating different kinds of art objects. He has been transforming his metal sandcast sculptures into cast glass forms.

Skynear Studios engaged Bremond House Gallery to create a limited edition series of contemporary abstracts of their originals to be offered both online and through BHG’s network of interior designers. Because of the use of mixed media in the original work, BHG selected camera capture for the best image. A color match was performed with the original at hand and was signed off on by the artist. A contemporary canvas was used for the edition and an acrylic-based UV coating was applied as a final step to resemble the feel of the original painting.

Skynear plays with light and shadowing in his paintings to create three dimensional worlds that viewers are encouraged to interpret in very personalized terms. His assemblages of urban structures and landscapes are expressed purely through the use of texture, color and form. Many of his pieces incorporate mixed media elements that add a richness and quality that is reminiscence of the old world masters.