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Robert Butler: A Life Full Of Lessons
Joseph Brown III/Tampa Tribune
Robert Butler a father of nine children who all embraced art and became artist.
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Published: June 13, 2008
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Robert Butler has made a life doing what he loves.
One of the Highwaymen, he paints Florida landscapes, has been married for 45 years and raised nine children, all of whom shared his love of art.
That passion — and considerable talent — isn't the only thing he passed along to his family.
He instilled important life lessons, many of them learned at an early age from his mother and shaped by the world in which he lived.
Butler grew up during the civil rights era. He remembers the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He can recall Rosa Parks' bravery on the bus. He attended segregated schools. Ask Butler how racism affected him, and he will simply tell you it didn't.
"The psychology of that came from my mother," he says. "Every person I encountered in my life, along my way, I had no sense of prejudice, no sense of separation of colors. Every person I met, I looked at as a human being."
Butler was raised in Okeechobee. He was born to sharecroppers in Baxley, Ga. His parents separated when he was 3, and he moved to Florida with his mother.
"What I got from her is that everybody deserves to be heard, and everybody deserves to be accepted as a decent person no matter what color they are," Butler says.
These ideas, he says, gave him a view of the world that opened doors, removed barriers and put him in front of people who helped him become a successful artist, husband and father.
Find What You Love
Butler, 64, has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. As early as seventh grade, a teacher offered him $20 to paint a sailboat on a moonlit lake.
As a teenager, he learned about the dodo bird's extinction and was impressed at how artists' renderings were the only records of how the birds looked. He says that steered him to landscapes as his subjects, knowing he could preserve Florida's wilderness with paint.
Although his first love was art, Butler met his true love, Dorothy Williams, in the early 1960s.
"I got married in '63. Then we had our first child in '63 and one about every year after that," he says.
Go For Your Dreams
Butler graduated from high school in 1964 and worked as an orderly at Okeechobee General Hospital. There, he struck up a friendship with a doctor, Steve Johnson.
After Johnson would finish his rounds, the two would talk about art. Eventually, the doctor commissioned Butler to paint bird dogs hunting, and he offered to critique Butler's work.
Johnson kept horses and dogs on his property and hunted for birds, so he was familiar with the subject.
"He would point out that when you watch bird dogs, they have an intensity. Their body trembles because they are so intense," Butler says. "He would describe how tense their muscles were and how their eyes looked."
Butler says those critiques were the best art lessons he had.
"He taught me to paint the essence of the animal, not just a picture," Butler says.
Butler worked at the hospital about three years, always painting on the side and hoping to make it in his profession. By his last year there, he and his wife had two children and another on the way. He knew he had to make ends meet. He was struggling to choose the right path when the answer hit him over the head.
"I remember being in the north wing of the hospital taking care of a patient," he recalls. "I saw one of the prettiest sunsets in all my life, and I wanted to go home right then and paint it.
"At that point, inside my own heart, I made a decision."
Shortly after that, Butler found work in McLean, Va., as an offset pressman. And he kept painting.
On April 4, 1968, King was shot. Butler recalls that day as a turning point in his life — because of the reactions of those around him.
As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out across the nation. National Guard troops were deployed. McLean, less than 10 miles outside of Washington, had its share of upheaval.
Butler recalls stepping outside to see the city in flames. As he stood there, a child hauling looted items passed.
"I never will forget," he says, "this little kid pushing a grocery cart down the street in front of my apartment one morning, and I was coming out to go to work. It just stunned me. I stopped and thought about that and looked at that kid for a long time."
He says the moment pushed him to go for his dream, and he returned to Florida.
"He told me he wanted to be a professional," Dorothy Butler recalls. "I said, 'In art?' And he said, 'Yes,' and I said, 'We'll try it for a while and see if it works out.'"
Market Yourself
By that time, Robert Butler had become friends with a group of black artists in Fort Pierce who traveled Florida's highways trying to sell their paintings of landscapes.
Butler painted and traveled up and down U.S. 27, stopping in Fort Pierce, Avon Park, Orlando and anywhere he thought a piece might sell.
On weekends in Okeechobee, Butler would set up his work on a grass strip across from an arts, crafts and framing store. Jim Fitch, who owned the store, quickly recognized Butler's potential.
"I have been in the business a long time, and I have never met an artist who had the ability to interpret Florida's landscape like him," says Fitch, who eventually coined the name "Highwaymen" to refer to the group of artists. "He knows about his area, his region. It's hard to catch him in a lie on canvas."
But Butler's talent is not the sole reason for his success, Fitch says. His character and intuition also play a role.
"He recognized the value of marketing himself," Fitch says. "He was very literate, very personable, charming. Those were his assets."
Be 'Above It'
In the early 1970s, racial tension in Florida remained thick.
Butler says that as his career took off, a realization surfaced about how painting bridged a gap between him and those who bought his work.
"I asked some of the ranchers why they let me come onto their property and paint it," he says. "They said it was because of who you are and your personality."
Fitch agrees. "Robert was aware of the racial issues in the '60s and '70s — he had to be because he was a black man — but that wasn't a factor," he says. "He was above it and beyond it."
Butler had a gift, and he was eager to share it. He painted all across Florida, and everyone he met was a potential customer.
"During that time, I met people who played into my career significantly, people who were head of organizations and would direct me into series of paintings," he says.
His first big sale came in 1977: A landscape with wild pigs sold for $3,000 to a doctor in St. Petersburg.
'You Have To Find A Way'
Despite traveling extensively, Butler always made time for his children. The last of nine, Angela, was born in 1976.
"He tried to stay involved as much as he could," Dorothy Butler says, "but when you're raising children, you have to find a way to make a living, and I understood that."
In the Butler household, organization was key.
"We had a very systematic way of doing things," Robert Butler says. "Our kids were never free to run all over the place and yell and scream because if you let one person do it, you gotta let everybody else do it. Anyone who runs away from the group gets the clamp-down."
A clamp-down could be as easy as a look, he says, because that is all it took most of the time.
"We were serious parents," he says. "We taught our kids very early, from an early age, about obedience."
They had chores, too.
"Everybody had to wash dishes," he says. "You're talking about 11 people all the time. Everything had to be done quickly."
The Butlers took time out for fun, too. His oldest daughter, Dorene, a professional painter, recalls laughing a lot.
"He's a comedian," she says. "We were always playing with Mom and Dad. We were Dad's little buddies."
"He has our respect, of course," she adds quickly.
'Don't Look Back'
Butler recalls one grandiose idea he had in the 1980s that never quite got off the ground, but it illustrates the heart and dedication he had for his children.
"I got this crazy idea I was going to build this family buggy and take all the kids out in the woods, and we were going to sleep and camp out for a week," he says. "I got in that Michelangelo mode, and I designed the transmission, drew the vehicle out on paper and bought the parts, had a motor rebuilt, went through the whole nine yards, welded the thing together."
He spent hours on the project.
"I was out there every night, working till 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, welding, sparks flying all over the place."
The day to start the engine arrived. He hit the starter, and the motor kicked on. But the buggy wouldn't budge
But that wasn't the most important thing. He wanted his children to learn from his determination and attitude about scrapping the project.
"As a forward-thinking person, I have always said, whatever decision you make, make it under the best circumstances and with the best knowledge you can gather, and don't look back," he says. "Life is never certain."
Give It Your Best
One thing turned out to be a pleasant surprise, Butler says. He watched all nine children follow in his footsteps to become artists.
"I never expected all nine of my kids to paint," he says. "That never seemed realistic."
He says he never pushed them to paint, but he did push them to do something.
Dorene, 41, jokes Nike may have stolen the tag "Just Do It" from her dad.
"I've always been interested in them picking what they want to do and giving it their best shot, just like I did," Butler says.
Stay Strong For Your Family
Despite the success that abounded from so much artistic talent, Butler's family was not immune to tragedy and heartache.
In 1986, the family lost David, the fourth child, when he was 19 and living in Valdosta, Ga. His father says he got mixed up with people who were into drugs, and that lifestyle led to his death.
Robert Butler says that at that time, he considered himself "extremely well-rounded, educated about life and death," but when his son died, his world was shaken.
"Even though I know spiritually what happens and how all of that's looked at, it meant nothing at that point because a part of you had died."
Then in 2000, the family lost Michael, the seventh child and youngest son, to diabetes.
"Michael was probably going to be one of the world's greatest wood sculptors, he was already on his way there," Butler says.
Through the painful experience, Butler stayed strong for his family.
"I used to go back and ask the question 'Why didn't I just break down like a lot of people do and become incapacitated for a while?'" he says. "That was never an option for me because I am very much aware of how much responsibility I have for the rest of the family."
In his healing process, painting again played a role.
"Work was one of the main things that helped in that situation a lot, kept me from thinking about it. But the depth of the pain was indescribable. There is no way you can put it into words."
'Live Happily Ever After'
As recently as 2003, the family faced another setback. Butler suffered a stroke. Although a scary experience, he is quick to point out its positive effects.
He says the stroke sharpened his painting skills.
His theory is that the stroke blocked memories he considers baggage.
"In essence, all of our memories take a certain amount of energy to maintain," he says. "And then something happens that strips away some of what was blocking all of that creativity."
Butler's wife says she never guessed he would become a professional painter or that it would play such an important role in their lives, but she doesn't regret any of it.
"It kept us together," she says.
And so he continues to paint. And with each stroke of his brush, he maintains his easygoing nature. He makes life seem effortless, as if he has no worries. Maybe that is because he feels he has a solid hold on his future.
"Now that all my kids have turned out to be artists," he says with a smile, "I hope to retire and get a portion of their proceeds and live happily ever after."
ABOUT THE HIGHWAYMEN
A group of black artists out of Fort Pierce started to come together in the 1950s, traveling Florida's highways, selling paintings. Influenced by A.E. Backus, they used vivid colors to capture scenes of untouched Old Florida. Art collector and museum curator Jim Fitch named the group the Florida Highwaymen in the 1990s. Many of the 26 artists continue to paint and sell their pieces today. The group is recognized as an important part of American folk history, and its members' original works are sought after by art enthusiasts.
Robert Butler is working on a book about his life, including his role as one of the Florida Highwaymen. He expects the book, not yet named, to be out in the fall.
For information about his work or upcoming book, go to www.robertbutler.com.
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