72nd A•ONE Exhibition

72nd A•ONE is a competition/exhibition highlighting the diversity of work that is currently being made by established and emerging artists.

Juror: Sharon Butler, painter and arts writer, widely known as the founder of Two Coats of Paint.

**Two Coats of Paint, a project which includes an influential art blogazine about painting, an artists’ residency, online conversations, a small press, and other initiatives. Her abstract paintings, which explore the tension between the digital and handmade, are based on small drawings that she makes in a phone app. Solo painting exhibitions in 2016, 2018, and 2021 at Theodore Gallery were written about in Hyperallergic, artcritical, The New Criterion, The James Kalm Report, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine. In an artcritical review of her 2021 solo, artist-critic Laurie Fendrich called her work “beautiful and grittily compelling” and suggested that “the future of abstraction will be owned by those who accept a post-compositional approach to their paintings. Right now, Sharon Butler has the best of both worlds.” She has received awards and residencies from Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Connecticut State University, Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Pocket Utopia, and Counterproof Press.

Sharon has served as a lecturer and/or Visiting Artist/Critic at many notable art programs and organizations, including Brown University, Cornell University, Vermont Studio Center, Penn State, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hoffberger School of Painting(MICA), School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design. She currently teaches in the MFA programs at the New York Academy of Art and the University of Connecticut.