Tom Butler | Maine Arts Journal
Summer 2025 | Tom Butler
I Became a Room
In lockdown, I became a room. I grew floors and walls, and sometimes ceilings. Mostly, I was a corner. People stood, ghosts floated, mice nibbled, and peepholes formed. Sometimes my walls and floors broke apart: wood splintered, joists groaned, and screws came loose.
These drawings explore the interiority that was part and parcel of the time they were made—in lockdown. These interiors—both from memory and imagined—brought my feelings of solitude and uncertainty to eerie and uncanny “life.” Unsure what to make but knowing I had to make something, I started drawing empty rooms, lots of empty rooms. I worked on them compulsively, daily, with little understanding of what I was doing except for the catharsis they gave me and the knowledge that I had to keep making them. I worked in our small guest room on a tiny pink Victorian vanity with red pencil and ink, and sketchbook paper. I made over four hundred of them, of which eighty or so will be shown at Sarah Bouchard Gallery, finally framed and finished, from mid-August.
