Tom Butler | Portland Press Herald
September 11, 2022 | Jorge Arango
Galleries Show the Spectrum of Maine’s Contemporary Art Scene
“Don’t Show This to Anybody” at Sarah Bouchard Gallery (through Sept. 18) is a meditative oasis of calm compared to the colorful expressionism of Seven. Tom Butler, an unjustly under-appreciated Portland artist, is interested in looking at photography from every angle but the most obvious; meaning as documentation of frozen moments of reality. His thesis is that photography has forever changed memory, made it lazy and untrustworthy beyond its normal unreliability. If we doubt what someone looked like, there is the photo to remind us.
