BUTTERFLY BEAUTY - Thoughts on my new sculpture series

BUTTERFLY BEAUTY is a very personal artistic expression of beauty and redemption.

I have long been fascinated with butterflies. As a child, I’d collect caterpillars, put them in jars, watch them spin their cocoons, and eagerly await their emergence as butterflies. Apparently, many share this fascination. In St. Louis where I live, we have two wonderful “butterfly houses” where people of all ages enjoy these same things. Walking through these all-glass houses is like walking through a magical space. When a butterfly alights on your arm (or leg, ear, hair, etc.!) it feels as if some mysterious incarnation of beauty has visited and blessed you.

The sheer variety and aesthetic beauty of butterflies is beyond compare. With around 17,500 species in the world, their beauty is almost limitless. As living visual art, these little creatures dazzle with their delightful shapes, forms, colors, lines, textures and more. As performing artists, they delight by elegantly fluttering and drifting through the air. To behold this creature’s flight approximates what it might be like to watch a painted masterpiece suddenly lift itself off the wall and dance in mid-air.

Later in life, I began appreciating a deeper level of butterfly-beauty: butterflies as symbols of transformation, redemption, and hope. I especially noticed this as a unique aspect of story-telling and character-development in films like Bella (2006), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and The American (2010). The butterfly’s unique role as an icon for such things makes perfect sense, really. Its transformation from a relatively ugly, worm-like caterpillar to a stunning winged beauty is mysterious, dramatic, and beautiful. For these same reasons, the Christian Tradition aptly uses the butterfly to symbolize redemption – the dramatic changes wrought by God in believers by grace through faith in the Gospel.1

All these things uniquely qualify butterflies as a sculptural subject. Just as a real butterfly emerges from its cocoon, so too do my sculptures “emerge” through a heartfelt and careful creative process.

I start by making a template of a specific butterfly’s form, paying careful attention to its unique curves, proportions, and edges. Then, I choose sustainably-forested wood with grain that reflects the aesthetic story (color forms, especially) in that specific butterfly’s wings. This same wood grain remains visible in the finished piece, adding depth and warmth, since I use wood-penetrating washes and stains – instead of wood-coating paints – to color to my work.

The basic, 3-D sculptural form emerges after I trace my pattern onto the wood, and then cut the wood. Sculpting continues as I soften the raw form’s edges and contour its surfaces. I employ various sculpting tools and techniques to texturize the wood, mimicking the soft, grain-like texture of an actual butterfly’s wings. This ensures that the lines (i.e., edges where color collides) on the creature’s wings stay soft and organic instead of hard and mechanical.

Emergence continues as I freehand sketch the creature’s wing and body color-forms onto the sculpted wood. Adding color is an adventure in hues, tones, sheens, gradients, and saturation. I’m constantly amazed at the variety and beauty within the individual color-forms that later combine to compose the stunning visual delight we behold as an entire butterfly. After coloring, I add a clear-coat finish and assemble the artwork. The transformation is now complete. The beautiful creature has finally emerged. It’s a moment of celebration I love to share with all who see or acquire these deeply meaningful and carefully-created artworks.

Perhaps you have a favorite butterfly I have not yet created. (There are, after all, over 17,500 species worldwide!) If so, please contact me with your ideas and let’s embark on a creative journey together and watch your own special butterfly emerge! Here’s a video of my process for the gorgeous Kamehameha Butterfly:

1 See Isaiah 43:18-19, Ezekiel 36:26, Romans 12:1-2, 1 Corinthians 15:40, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 4:16-17, 5:17, and Ephesians 4:22-24, Revelation 21:5