John Philip Busby

John Philip Busby (1928– 3 June 2015) was an influential artist whose close observation of nature and dedication to drawing from life inspired several generations of leading wildlife artists.

Biography

John Philip Busby was born in Bradford in 1928 and attended Ilkley Grammar School. After National Service, he studied at Leeds College of Art and then at Edinburgh College of Art, ECA, where he was awarded post-graduate and major travel scholarships. On return from France and Italy he was invited to join the staff of ECA, where he taught drawing and painting from 1956 until 1988. by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin USA.

A much celebrated wildlife artist, Busby was also a dedicated landscape painter whose work was often executed in bold colours, in styles ranging from highly representational to near abstract. Views of the land from above – a bird's eye view – seemed to fascinate him and the expansiveness of the sky also held great appeal, becoming very nearly the sole subject of some paintings. Birds feature in many of the paintings and it's clear that the concept of habitat and territory was a rich seam of study. One long running series was of the rockpools at Tyninghame in East Lothian. The interplay of shapes, whether of man-made irrigation circles or transient cloudscapes featured often. 'Landscape in a Granite Rock II' was recreated as a tapestry by the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh.

Busby exhibited widely both at home and abroad and had a major retrospective exhibition at Bradford City Art Gallery in 1999/2000. A retrospective exhibition was held at Nature in Art, in August 2015, and two major exhibitions were held in June 2016 at the Royal Scottish Academy and concurrently at The Scottish Gallery. An exhibition entitled John Busby; Friends and Influences was the final exhibition held at the Wildlife Art Gallery, Lavenham, in November and December 2016. During the Edinburgh Art Festival in August 2019 the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh devoted their whole space to his paintings from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Busby lived near Ormiston in East Lothian and was married to the mezzo-soprano and singing teacher Joan Busby. Music was an abiding passion. He died in Edinburgh in June 2015.