James Busby

 “A primary ingredient for my art has always been – and I believe always will be – Passion. Without it I think my work is lifeless. Ideas and concepts are important, but they only have a real value when infused with a dynamic spirit.” 

James Busby makes this statement with a personal conviction that allows him to continue to create and produce his art – an art that comes from his encounter with nature and the world around him. He is a Texan by birth, ancestry, and temperament. But his training and experience has combined to give him a view of the world that is truly diverse – spiritually as well as artistic.

Born in Jacksonville, Texas, Busby spent much of his childhood in the woodlands of East Texas and the wide expanses of the Texas Plains Country. From his earliest recollections come sights, sounds, smells, and feelings that are locked in his memory and provide the inspiration to produce art that focuses on nature and the landscape.

Busby’s artistic inheritance includes a wide range of likely and unlikely influences.

It is obvious that French Impressionism and some of its equivalents of the Twentieth Century emanates from Busby’s art. His connection to other definitive periods of art and artists may not be noticeable at first appearances, but non the less, they are there – J.M.W. Turner, Gustave Klimt, and Paul Jenkins, to name a few.  In Busby’s view, however, he is an independent – “I feel that my work and life allows me the freedom to admire and reflect on the art of other painters whose allegiances are quite different than my own.”

 “There is something about nature,” Busby says, “ that enthralls and captivates me."  In ‘The Tree’ by John Fowles, he writes that ‘art and nature are siblings, branches of the one tree.’