Lola Butan
Lola Butan is a painter originally from Los Angeles, California. She is a third-year student in the combined-degree program at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, studying psychology and art. Working mainly in oil paint, Lola creates imagined scenes featuring imagery from hazy memories, as well as personal photos. In her work, thin, oily paint is built up in rapid brush strokes. The painting’s world, characters, and structures emerge as the brushstrokes pile up. Headlights are often featured, their bright vibrating bulbs of light, disrupt the darkness that cradles them. In Lola’s work, the darkness of the nighttime presents an opportunity to abstract the familiar, allowing new worlds to reveal themselves.
Collect Bean: What does growth mean to you?
Lola Butan: I don’t think I have a completely concrete answer yet. Right now, I have been observing growth in the way I consider paint and paintings. The longer I paint, the more fascinated I become with just the paint itself and what it can do on its own, what it can hide or reveal. I think right now, I’m doing a lot of exploring and testing with paint to see what I like, to see what needs further attention. I think this process of testing and experimenting contributes to and is growth!
Collect Bean: What does an ideal day in your studio look like?
Lola Butan: An ideal day in the studio starts earlier in the day, maybe like 9 or 10 am! When I’m home for school breaks or the summer, I turn my parent’s garage into a makeshift studio; it gets nice lighting in there, so it works out perfectly. My favorite days in the studio are usually when me and the painting are on the same page, days where it doesn’t feel like I’m working against the painting. I also almost always create a painting that looks different from what I imagined or sketched. The days where this alternate painting reveals itself are probably my favorite.
Collect Bean: Where are you currently finding inspiration?
Lola Butan: Right now, a main source of inspiration is my walk home from my 6 pm statistics class. During this walk, it’s super dark out, and everyone in their houses has their lights on. I love to see windows lit up, little yellow squares in the darkness. I think a lot about how the darkness surrounds light things. When painting, I usually leave the light parts of the canvas or panel untouched, letting the underpainting peek through. I surround these parts with thick, dark paint. It reminds me of how the light interacts with the dark at nighttime, how the dark seems to cradle the light. It’s cool to imagine these varying kinds of light, quite intangible in nature, as thick vs. thin paint, two different tangible consistencies.
I also have an Instagram account where I collect images and paintings I love. I look here a lot for inspiration. Some of my favorite painters right now are Ambera Wellmann, Joshua Hagler, Maja Ruznic, and Adam Alessi.
Collect Bean: What does your painting process look like from start to finish?
Lola Butan: It’s pretty different for each painting, but recently, I’ve been going into the painting with little idea of what it will look like. Though, I do begin the painting with a specific color palette in mind. I usually have a reference photo for the figure if there is one. I start out by placing the figure in the painting. From there, I usually imagine and build a scene around it. It’s a lot of messing around with the painting, wiping down the surface and restarting. I also rely on finding scenes or figures within the paint. Sometimes, the paint will sit in a way that suggests some kind of familiar structure or body part. I watched a talk with Maja Ruznic, and she talked about how the figures or scenes start to reveal and introduce themselves. I’ve been having this experience a lot recently and it’s so exciting!
Collect Bean: What role does color play in your practice?
Lola Butan: When I first started art school 2ish years ago now, I would mainly paint with dark blue colors. The dark blue really informed me what kinds of paintings I wanted to make. Every time I imagined a new painting, I would think about it in terms of that color. Recently, I’ve departed from this dark blue somewhat. Right now, I’m most interested in the color of the underpainting. I’ve been using a yellow ochre and lemon-yellow mix underneath, letting it peak through bits of paint. I like seeing how thin, washy colors sit on top of this layer. I’ve also been experimenting with scumbling. The way the thick, dry paint interacts with the underpainting, revealing it in some places, hiding it in others, has been really exciting for me! I would say, generally, the colors I choose before I start a painting guide me in finding out what the painting will ultimately look like.
