Who We Are
We started this because we got tired of watching good artists go unrepresented.
Our Story
Hot with Butter started the way most good things do: a friendship, a frustration, and a lot of conversations that kept circling back to the same problem.
Luke Flynt is a painter. Erica Levine has been a collector since college — the kind who spent her early years trading studio assistant work for actual artwork, hauling canvases home on the train, making wall space where there wasn't any. Between them they have one studio practice, one collection that's been growing for decades, and a shared conviction that the art world (for all its talk of supporting artists) does a pretty poor job of it in practice.
Luke knows what it's like to make work that matters and have no idea how to get it in front of the right people. Erica knows what it's like to fall in love with a piece of work and want desperately to own it, and to wish someone had made that easier. She also knows what it takes to build something from the ground up, find the people who should know about it, and make sure they do.
Together, that's Hot with Butter.
We're based in Maine and Massachusetts, which means we're close to the land, close to the water, and far enough from the art world's centers of gravity to see them clearly. We work nationally. We are, however, completely serious about the work.
What We Believe
Artists deserve better business support than they get. The gallery model was built for galleries. The platform model was built for platforms. Neither was built for the artist trying to sustain a practice, build a collector base, and still have time to get in the studio. We built Hot with Butter for that person (because one of us is that person).
Collecting should feel like something. The best art doesn't decorate a room; it changes it. Erica's been collecting long enough to know that the pieces that matter most aren't the impressive ones, they're the ones you couldn't walk away from. We want to help collectors find those pieces — and we're honest about what's right for you, even when that means saying a work isn't.
Small is a feature, not a limitation. We represent a small roster on purpose. Every artist we work with is someone we know deeply, whose practice we understand completely, and whose work we can speak about with conviction. When we tell a collector a piece is extraordinary, we mean it, because we'd never say it otherwise.
Transparency isn't optional. Pricing is visible. Commission rates are stated upfront. Contracts are straightforward. If you ever want to know something about how we work, just ask. We'll tell you.
Team
Luke Flynt
Painter & Co-founder
Luke Flynt is a painter based in Maine. His work — atmospheric, layered, quietly structural — has been shown across New England and collected nationally. He co-founded Hot with Butter because he wanted to build the representation he wished had existed when he was starting out. He brings to the agency an intimate understanding of what artists actually need, what the studio feels like from the inside, and what it means to make work in a place like Maine.
Erica Levine
Co-founder
Erica Levine has been collecting art since college — not because she had money for it, but because she couldn't help herself. She spent her early years trading studio assistant work for actual artwork: stretching canvases, pulling prints, mixing pigment, doing whatever needed doing in exchange for pieces she believed in and couldn't afford any other way. Those works are still on her walls. Her background is in design, which means she thinks hard about how things look, how they feel, and how they communicate. She brings to Hot with Butter the business infrastructure, the outreach strategy, the collector relationships, and the organizational muscle that allows the artists on the roster to stay focused on their practice.