As a kid, I was captivated by C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — not so much by the story as by the fantastical possibility that inside the known, shallow, contained space of a closet, I might find a mysterious, expansive snow-covered forest.
Though Steve Budington’s mostly abstract paintings are a world away from Narnia, they provoke that same sense of magical exploration, of discovering something just on the edge of what’s known by opening up an overlooked space — not a wardrobe, in this case, but a canvas.
In his solo show, “Rain Cabinet,” on view through the end of the year at the Phoenix in Waterbury, Budington presents works that are arguably sculptural reliefs but are too much about painting to be called anything else. He layers canvases and panels on top of each other, some facing the wall. Pieces of frames bound empty space or lead the eye from one surface to the next. Here and there, a fluorescent edge or a wood stretcher peeks out to highlight just how the picture is constructed.
As well as literally deconstructing his canvases, Budington breaks his artworks’ subject — our relationship to the natural world — into more metaphorical component parts. Though Budington’s style varies from careful patterns and subtle gradients to loose, scrubbing brushstrokes, the work is landscape-adjacent: While there may not be anything picturing a tree or a field, elements add up to suggest the environment.
In the central canvas of “window out,” for instance, shades of blue and green are overlaid with short, bright red directional strokes. Up close, some of the paint is peeling and scraped: Multiple layers blend together. From far away, the red marks read like a map of wind directions. A partial frame, painted fluorescent orange, creates another level in the work — a corner that vibrates starkly against deep blues but almost dissolves into the red layer of paint where its edge is worn down and full of holes. In front of both, a smaller panel, half ocean blue and half grayish cream, recalls the calm after the storm.
“Glacier” likewise uses bright color to great effect. This time, lavender shadows and blue ponds describe an aerial view of a glacier. A deep-purple texture of dots bleeds through like a bruise on skin, as though the glacier is melting from beneath. The canvas is offset from the icy-blue edge of a frame, which in turn lies atop a red-orange fluorescent panel; that layer is like magma in a tectonic sandwich, lending energy and motion to a precariously stacked composition.
Symbols play a role in Budington’s work, from a marine signal flag in “the waves and the signal (call shore)” to hurricane weather-map icons in “storm cursive” and “another untitled event.” The latter combines two panels and a partial frame in an snowy palette of grays and blues. An organic-seeming curve on the rear panel could equally represent a bent sapling (seen from the side) or a road or a river (from above) against a background the color of an ominous sky. In front, smooth white swaths have overtaken a field of the little hurricane symbols, as well as whatever scene or information they illuminated, which filters through in patches. What might’ve once resembled a map has given way to experiential chaos, the legend and its meaning both lost.
Other works seem close and intimate, particularly the show’s titular “rain cabinet,” one of the largest works at 60 by 54 inches. It’s made up of four separate canvases butted up against each other. Two of them feature angled blue planes and realistic raindrops, suspended as though on glass. Budington differentiates the surfaces through his paint handling: Here, washes create a translucent feel; there, opacity with the slightest of gradients describes a shallow space. A cream-and-white rectangle portrays folds in fabric — maybe a sheet, maybe the canvas itself — with believable softness. Amid these, one panel shows the puffy ridges of a charcoal sleeping bag, bordered by a red zipper and a tag. Once you realize what it is, that piece situates the otherwise abstract scene and immediately brings to mind the cozy sound of rain heard from inside a tent.
It makes sense that Budington’s paintings don’t look like completed landscapes as much as they emerge as such from assembled parts. In addition to being a painter and an associate professor at the University of Vermont, he is a landscape designer and master gardener. (Shelburne residents might have seen his work at the Pierson Library, where he designed the front garden and offers public programs on sustainable landscaping.)
Budington seems to approach painting the way one would plant and maintain a garden — seeding, transplanting, pruning and watering, seeing what components take root, how colors change over time, how shapes play against each other. In his statement for the show, he writes, “I wonder what the painting contains, hides, or reveals in its compressed visual volume.” The answer is usually quite a lot. There’s always a sense that more is hidden behind a layer of paint or on the back side of a panel, heightening the notion that each artwork is a real, if strange, space worth exploring.
“Steve Budington: Rain Cabinet,” on view through December 31 at the Phoenix in Waterbury. thephoenixvt.com
The original print version of this article was headlined “Cabinet of Curiosity | Steve Budington presents emergent paintings at the Phoenix in Waterbury”
This article appears in Nov 19-25 2025.
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