Yuan Butler (b. China) is a visual artist and educator based in Duluth, Georgia. She began her academic training in drawing and traditional Chinese ink painting at an early age, developing a sensitivity to line, space, and restraint that continues to inform her work. After immigrating to the United States in 2014, Butler started to practice and work primarily in oil. Drawing from memory, history, and the natural world, Butler explores themes of transformation, longing, and the fluid relationship between self and place through imagined worlds. Her paintings reflect a quiet accumulation of time, gesture, and light, unfolding as psychological terrains where organic forms and shifting landscapes emerge and dissolve through layered color and mark-making. She constructs a space that resists fixed narratives and invites contemplative engagement.
Butler earned her MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and currently teaches art at Georgia Gwinnett College. This year, her work is featured as the Cover Page in New Visionary Magazine (NY). Her work has also been featured in New American Paintings (2024) and Create! Magazine (2025). She received the Cecile Adler Cliffer Memorial Cutting Edge Award from the National Association of Women Artists (2024), and her painting series Four Seasons was acquired into the permanent collection by SCAD Savannah (2025). Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including exhibitions in Atlanta, New York, Boston, Chicago, and across Georgia.
