john busby

52 Pages·2016·3.04 MB·English

JOHN BUSBY

JOHN BUSBY
A Memorial Exhibition
1 - 25 June 2016
16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
TEL [phone] EMAIL [email protected]
www.scottish-gallery.co.uk
Cover: Guillemots and Razorbills with Passing Kittiwake and Shadow, watercolour, 27 x 30.5 cms (cat. 3) (detail)
Left: Abbot’s Boobies at the Nest, watercolour and pencil, 18 x 24.5 cms (cat. 9) (detail)
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Foreword
When I first saw John at work, he was high on a scaffolding tower, painting
his mural in the church of St Columba’s-by-the-Castle in Edinburgh. In the
many years that followed he was more often high up on cliffs or hillsides drawing
and painting the landscape, always looking out for birds. His life-long interest in bird
watching was a continuing pleasure to him and led to many travels and adventures.
I remember watching the making of Granada TV’s film Portrait of the Wild in Shetland;
he was perched in a gale on a sloping rock surrounded by numerous gannets, with the
waves sweeping in not far below. “Can you move down a bit”, said the camera man!
John’s enjoyment in observing and drawing bird behaviour is evident in the books
he wrote and illustrated. His ability to remember detailed moments of complex
movements seemed amazing to me - such as the drawings of sea eagles linking talons
in aerial mating display (Looking at Birds), and the studies of cranes preening, an endless
variety of twists and turns of the neck (Land Marks and Sea Wings).
I was fortunate to accompany John to many places I might not otherwise have visited,
such as the Galapagos islands and the mountains of Bulgaria and Majorca, but my
abiding memory of him is at home, sitting drawing at the kitchen table, watching
through the window the birds at the feeder on the balcony just a few feet outside –
blue tits, great tits, parties of long tailed tits, the occasional handsome nuthatch,
or suddenly a large woodpecker. The birds on the page were as lively as the birds
on the feeder and so full of his delight at seeing them. I hope you will see and have
the same delight in the pictures in this exhibition, for which my thanks go out to
Guy Peploe and The Scottish Gallery .
JOAN BUSBY
April 2016
Left: John Busby at
St Abb’s Head, 2006
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Introduction
John Busby RSA (1928-2015) was born in Yorkshire. The landscape of Wharfedale,
where he grew up, shaped his thoughts in childhood; he explored streams to the
source, cycled the war-time quiet roads, drew and learned the rhythms of nature.
He carried these landscapes in his mind's eye throughout his life. For John, it wasn’t
just the discovery of the moorland haunts of the merlin and nightjar that excited
him, but equally the mysterious marks of Bronze Age man carved into the rock of that
moorland. The spirit of place, the reading of symbol and shape within the landscape,
have run like threads through John’s work.
He went to Leeds School of Art and then to Edinburgh College of Art, where, after his
postgraduate and Traveller, he eventually joined the staff of the Drawing and Painting
School where he remained for 30 years. He was the most supportive and generous of
tutors and a well-loved colleague.
He developed his practice as a painter and illustrator with residences, travel awards and
sabbaticals to such diverse places as Orkney, Aldabra, the Falklands and the Galapagos
Islands. His work with Artists for Nature took him to conservation projects in The
Netherlands, Poland, Extremadura, India, Portugal and Israel. A great traveller, John was
nevertheless, active on the Scottish art scene, becoming President of the SSA from
1976-79 and as member of the RSW from 1982 and the RSA from 1985. In 2007, John
curated the successful and well received The Curious Eye for the RSA. After his retirement
he ran many drawing courses on the Bass Rock and was External Examiner for Natural
History Illustration at the Royal College of Art. Nearer to his home in Scotland, moorland
and coastlines of East Lothian have provided endlessly fascinating sources of inspiration,
resulting in a series of paintings of rock pools, cloudscapes and hillsides.
John has written widely on his interpretation of nature as a painter, and has illustrated
many books, making a significant contribution to the observation of the natural world,
inspiring and enthusing generations of wildlife artists. He has exhibited widely and
internationally; in 1999 he had a retrospective exhibition at Bradford City Art Gallery
and a major show at Nature in Art, Gloucestershire in 2015. Unfortunately John did not
live to see this last exhibition.
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John’s boyhood sense of wonder and involvement with the landscape never left him.
His enthusiasm masked his ageing. A lifelong Christian, he shared a love of music with
his wife Joan.
In John’s own words: “…The roots of landscape experience go deep into our
subconscious and its moods reflect our states of being… landscape becomes a
metaphor in art and music and literature for spiritual dimensions.”
VICTORIA CROWE RSA
April 2016
Right: John Busby
at Isle of May, 2005
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1. Young Grey Plover and Reflections, 1991
watercolour, 29 x 35 cms
signed and dated lower right
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2. Stonechat, 1988
pencil and wash, 18.5 x 14 cms
signed and dated lower right