Calgary artist’s roots are local

By Calvin Daniels Staff Writer

For an artist a multipiece commission is likely winning a lottery, and that was the case for

Billie Rae Busby.

“Over the last seven months, I completed a significant and unique art commission from TC Energy to create a total of 16 original paintings,” said Busby who resides in Calgary, but was born and raised in Yorkton.

The 16 artworks, ranging in size from largescale works of 52”x 86” down to 12” x 16”, were

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“These paintings will also be a permanent part of the TC Energy Corporate Art Collection, which will be a big highlight for my art resume,” said Busby.

Busby said the chance to do such a large collection is somewhat unique.

“The commission is especially significant and unique for a corporate collection due to its number of original paintings specifically created for the company by a living, local, emerging and I should also add in, a female artist,” she said.

“As well, I am the only artist exhibited on the entire 10th floor.

“Overall, it was a dream project to work on with their design team. I feel really lucky.”

Busby’s art roots are firmly in Yorkton though. She noted while attending Yorkton Regional High School she won the Art Award at graduation.

The interest in art however predates high school for Busby who has been in Calgary since 1999.

“I’ve been interested in drawing, arts and crafts since I was a very little girl,” she told Yorkton This Week.

“My mother was very crafty, she was always crocheting, sewing, crossstitch and quilting.

“I can recall my parents putting my own art desk in the living room, which was full of pens, markers, paper and glitter for me to play with whenever I wanted.

“Art was just something that I did. I don’t think there was ever a conscious choice to do that over other things, it just had always been something that I liked to do and how I enjoyed spending my time.”

After graduating YRHS Busby pursued her art further.

“My formal education was through the University of Saskatchewan in which I achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art, along with a Bachelor in Kinesiology in Sport

Management in 1998,” she said.

“However, I do credit my junior high teacher, the late Ms. (Sandra) MacColl, and my high school art teacher at the Regional, Ms. (Diane) Koch, for teaching me the fundamentals of art. Ms. Koch specifically really encouraged me and instilled a strong confidence in me to keep working on my art practice.”

And now art is not just a passion, but a career.

“Art is now a full-time career,” she explained. “I left my 20-year career in marketing, communications and sales during the pandemic in 2021 and in February, I will be coming up on my two-year anniversary of being a full-time artist. I am 47 years old.”

So what is Busby’s approach as an artist.

“When I was a teenager and in University, I focused mainly on drawing, specifically realistic work,” she said.

“After taking a break from art for many years, I came back to it in my late 20’s and early 30’s with a curious but rookie interest in painting, abstraction and colour theory.

“Over the last 15 years, I’ve been primarily focused on playing with a hard-edge painting technique, which in other words is using masking tape to create precise edges with acrylic paint. I began ages ago with realistic drawing and now have moved into abstract painting where the colour and shape set the scene and mood.

“I am attracted to abstract art as it has unlimited possibilities and helps me open my mind to new ways of looking at our surroundings. “

But, she still finds inspiration in the real world.

“My inspiration is our landscape,” offered Busby. “During one particular road trip as part of our regular travels back and forth from Calgary through Saskatchewan to visit my mom when she was ill in 2007, I had an epiphany where I saw our prairie landscape full of blue skies and lush fields as simple shapes and colour. It felt very comforting and full of possibilities.

“Ever since that moment, I have been trying really hard to paint our landscape in a new, fresh way. I am inspired by all of it -- the briskness of winter, northern lights, sunrises, sunsets, hot summer days and changing seasons.”

And perhaps because prairie skies seem endless Busby is drawn to larger works.

“I am currently preferring to work with medium and larger scale works, but I do also create small ones,” she said.

“The small ones tend to take almost as long as the large ones for me to create because I still need to wait in between layers to add additional paint. If I don’t wait for the paint to dry, the masking tape technique will smear and wreck all I’ve been working on. So, when I paint on large canvases, I can work on other areas of the painting while wet sections dry.

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Sometimes truth sits square in the middle of fiction. It does that in this rural legend, which, true to storytelling tradition, I plumped up from the skeleton of a similar tale told elsewhere.

Times were cold and the living hard in that rural community. Nevertheless, the members of the only local church gathered as usual for their annual soup and biscuit prayer lunch. Since they’d farewelled their last preacher earlier that year, a recently widowed farmer named George got tagged to mutter grace. Limping from an early morning incident involving his orneriest steer, he approached the podium. Removing