Rate My Professor Tina Butterfield

Tina Butterfield is Chair of Art and Professor of Art at Western Colorado University. She grew up on a farm in western Kansas and earned a BFA in Painting from Western Colorado University in 2004 and an MFA in Painting from Radford University in 2007. Returning to her alma mater as faculty in 2010, she has served nearly 15 years as a professor and recently advanced to department chair, where she bridges humanities and sciences, mentors students, and emphasizes art's role in communication, education, and citizenship.

Butterfield's practice features large-scale mixed media paintings and drawings using natural pigments from soil, ash, and local organic materials, focusing on women of the land in the Gunnison Valley to explore ranching, sustainability, water, geology, ancestry, and identity. Key exhibitions encompass the 2010 solo show Becoming at Sangre de Cristo Arts Center with a site-specific installation; 2016 New Zealand residency at Pacific Studios yielding a sold-out solo Humilitas at Toi Waiarapa, plus Pukaha Annual Invitational and the studio's 15th Anniversary Exhibition; 2017 In Motion at Gunnison Arts Center and Aratoi Museum invitational; and 2018 Sequoia National Park residency, with a large-scale painting acquired by Colorado Mesa University's Health Science Building. In 2023, she joined eight fellows selected for the WICHE Academy for Leaders in the Humanities, a Mellon-funded two-year program offering mentorship, seminars, and stipends. Her project expanded K-12 art teacher workshops through Colorado Art Education Association’s ArtSource, hosting 40 educators and national muralists on campus. The ongoing Women of the Land project portraits Gunnison women like range riders and ground crew members, with poems by Quincey Knight, seeking diverse voices including Ute tribe members.