Leo Bushman was born in Mishawaka, Indiana, USA, in 1917. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honours from the School of Arts, Institute of Chicago in 1941 and a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York in 1947. After heading the Technical Illustration Department at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, he was civilian director of the United States Pacific Air Force Arts and Crafts program in Japan and later served as the US Air Force Education Director in Seoul, South Korea. He was hired by the University of Calgary in 1966 as an instructor in the Fine Arts Department, a position he held until 1982. After retirement, he served as a board-appointed Research Associate of the Arctic Institute of North America and oversaw the Institute’s large collection of Arctic drawings, paintings, prints photographs, film and video. Bushman was a founding member of the Calgary Contemporary Arts Society and the Calgary Gallery of Visual Arts.

Leo Bushman’s renderings of the natural and urban landscape were mostly made on location as direct responses to his subjects. He was strongly influenced by his years in the orient and his artworks have a fresh immediacy, so characteristic of art from that region. He worked in a variety of media, including ink and brush, watercolour, painting, and printmaking, and during his long career he had a great many shows throughout Canada, the US and abroad. His work is represented in many public and private collections.

(Alberta Foundation for the Arts)