Painting for a live audience has long been a mode of expression for New Orleans-based artist John Bukaty. But the way he embodies thematic characters onstage as he paints took shape in Crested Butte just a few years ago.
On February 22, 2022, on the stage of the new Crested Butte Center for the Arts, Bukaty gave his first performance of HeART Work, at once an artistic sprint and a meditation. In one hour, Bukaty creates several paintings while channeling the archetypes he has distilled from his life experiences. His work now brings audiences across the world on the journey as Bukaty deconstructs himself and paints himself back together.
Bukaty lived in Crested Butte during a transformational period in his life, and he returned to the Center this winter, paying tribute to the place where he embarked on the past 16 years of sobriety and to the community that helped him believe it was possible.
“I came here to get refuge,” he says. It was 2008. He had just lost his father to cancer, lost a good friend to suicide, lost his art gallery in Denver, and lost himself in the pain of chronic drug and alcohol abuse.
“I felt like all my dreams were going to come true in Denver. And they kind of did,” he says of the years prior. He made a name for himself as an artist, but he struggled with competing parts of himself. Partying was a habit he’d formed early in life, and in Denver it overtook him. “I wasn’t skiing, and I wasn’t getting in the river, and I wasn’t going outside. I was doing everything until four in the morning. And sleeping till noon.”
After moments of hopelessness and despair, he realized his life was in jeopardy. “I knew I was starting to tap into a psychosis.”
In the biggest reset of his life, Bukaty decided to quit drinking and go to the mountains. In those delicate early weeks, he found Crested Butte.
“Nature is my greatest healer,” he says. “Crested Butte was my happy place, because everything was happy here. When I got here, I was kind of a lost soul. But I was in a safe space. And I had really good survival skills as an entrepreneur — or an artpreneur.”
Bukaty threw himself into painting and meditating, trading paintings for food and focusing on how to recharge his spirit. “I was setting myself up to heal. I knew I had to sit with myself to do that. But the dark side of that new light side was that I was going beyond the solitude I needed to recharge. I was isolating.”
Then Bukaty connected with a recovery community in Crested Butte, which remains an important part of his life. “I had no idea I would absolutely love these people. And they loved me unconditionally. You don’t think you’ll ever have a good time again when you sober up,” he says. “I didn’t know you could regulate your own nervous system until I learned all the ways to do it.”
He can, in fact, rattle off a dozen ways he has experimented with regulating his nervous system, from an ashram in India to a host of therapies. His approach to living these days includes deep introspection and devoted interaction.
As a kid, he says, he tended to either revolt against things he didn’t understand or check out when things got hard. “My ADD and my trauma left me a very hard kid to discipline. I was a pretty wild child.”
He now embraces changing modalities when he feels stagnant. “I have so many different styles. I’ve never thought being consistent was very creative. But being persistent is important. I’m just doing one giant experiment. As artists, we’re here to go out on the edge and bring it back to share with you.”
He might ask his audience for written words of encouragement, or he might hand someone his paintbrush. He will certainly ask real questions. “We have to connect with other humans,” Bukaty says.
A former college football player from Kansas City, Missouri, and the son of the late Denver Bronco fullback and poet Fred Bukaty, he easily bridges seemingly disparate themes in life, such as pro sports and fine art, romance and business, socializing and meditating.
“That’s what strikes most people — that I was a football player and an artist. They don’t see those going well together. I don’t see it as so odd, any more, because I see a lot of athletes cross over,” he says.
Those insights weave their way into some of Bukaty’s performed and painted archetypes. He explores that unruly but resilient child, the rock and roll partier, and the one carefully exercising self-discipline — “the CEO of my life and my dreams.” He personifies the vulnerable romantic, the parent, the monk.
His openness about his successes and struggles is disarming — and he’s made it a mission to help others talk about their struggles as well. He isn’t afraid to dive into heavy topics or to offer some levity. “We have to find a better way to just check in on people.”
Bukaty describes the Crested Butte way of centering around joy and connection, not just pursuing success. ”Life is meant to be enjoyed. It’s about freedom and what that means for you. Because the responsibilities are always going to be there.”