David Buttram

Cleveland, Ohio

David Buttram (b. 1947) is a Cleveland painter whose work reflects a lifelong engagement with the city and the people, places, and experiences found within it. For nearly five decades, he has explored the changing character of urban life through paintings distinguished by their use of light, shadow, reflection, and color.

Working within a figurative and observational tradition, Buttram draws inspiration from Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, the Impressionists, and painters of the Ashcan School. His subjects range from the human figure to streetscapes, interiors, and elements of the natural and built environment. Throughout his work, ordinary moments become vehicles for something larger: dignity, struggle, beauty, solitude, spirituality, and the complexity of human experience.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Buttram graduated from Glenville High School before serving as a United States Marine during the Vietnam War. He later studied at Cleveland's Cooper School of Art and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a Master of Arts from Kent State University. Alongside his studio practice, he spent his professional career as an art educator in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

Buttram's work has been exhibited extensively in Ohio and beyond, including at Karamu House, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland State University, Mansfield Art Center, Cain Park, Waterloo Arts, Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where his paintings received repeated recognition in juried exhibitions. He was twice awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, in 1987 and 1990, and received Best Painting in the Cleveland Institute of Art's Drawn Together juried exhibition in 1999. His work has also been commissioned by Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital and Society Bank and included in the Governor's Residence Art Collection in Columbus.

Buttram remains an active presence in Northeast Ohio's visual arts community. In 2026, he was selected for the Paul and Norma Tikkanen Painting Prize, a highly competitive juried exhibition recognizing excellence in painting. His work is also featured in the Cultural Heritage Exhibition at Beck Center for the Arts on view August 28 through November 1, 2026, in the Hoffman-Stach Gallery.

Retired from teaching, Buttram continues to paint from his home studio in Cleveland. Taken together, his work forms an enduring visual record of a city he has observed throughout his life—one shaped not only by its architecture and neighborhoods, but by the people and experiences that give those places meaning.