The Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh showed a major exhibition of the distinctive landscape paintings of John Busby during the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Featuring many previously unseen paintings, all held by the artist’s estate, this exhibition showed Busby’s avid passion for panoramas and ‘bird’s eye views’ undertaken during his prolific career.
Landscape has always been at the centre of his art. His long acquaintance with the surrounding environment allowed deep connections to take root – the land, clouds and seas transformed into metaphors for an inner state of being. In his book Landmarks and Sea Wings he wrote:
My early desire to be an artist grew from a passionate love of landscape. I was brought up in the dales of Yorkshire just before and during WW2. This landscape shaped my thoughts in childhood almost as much as parents, teachers and world events did, and from it grew my early understanding of form and life, and one’s place in to the larger scheme of nature. I loved to explore and follow streams to their sources; to cycle the twisting roads of Wharfedale, which were empty of traffic in wartime; to be curious and learn about nature, and to draw. These are the landscapes I still carry in my mind’s eye even though I have lived in Scotland most of my life.
Two concerts linked to this exhibition were given during the Edinburgh Festival. Details here