Mike Butler attended the Ontario College of Art for 4 years, graduating in 1980 as an Associate of the Ontario College of Art (AOCA) in Fine Arts. For several years he worked in watercolours and ink developing an expressionistic style. Shortly after graduating, he purchased a Color Computer from Radio Shack. Teaching himself to program in Color Basic, he began creating his first Digital Art and began experimenting with animated Mondrian style graphics. He became fascinated by the endless streams of digital imagery that were possible and the fascinating and surreal, abstract patterns that the computer allowed, simply by tweaking a few parameters and formulas. He was hooked.