| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Billie Rae Busby was born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan and lives in Calgary, Alberta. Busby credits these experiences — living in both a big city and a small prairie town, and the balance between the complexity and simplicity that each reflects — as a key influence in her artistic practice as an abstract landscape painter. Busby’s first solo exhibition was held at the Yorkton Regional High School where she was a student. Her works have since been included in exhibitions at major galleries across western Canada and in Ontario and the United States. She has completed commissions for Foreign Affairs Canada, for Canada House in London, England and for the temporary public art project “Shaping / Expanding Horizons,” a set of banners for SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary, Alberta. In 2014, she received the Painter’s Key Emerging Artist Award from the Canadian Federation of Artists.
Busby holds a Bachelor of Arts (fine arts, 1998) and a Bachelor of Science Education with Distinction (kinesiology, 1998), both from the University of Saskatchewan. She has also studied painting, silkscreen, mixed media and marketing through the Extended Studies department of the Alberta College of Art and Design. She participates often in fundraising events and contributed a painting to the artist-led 2013 Alberta Flood Rose Project raising money for Red Cross Alberta Flood Relief.
Compiled 2014 |