The artist behind Vision's member cards: Billie Rae Busby

"Creativity was around all the time, and that has lived with me since."

A journey through the Canadian prairies is like no other. From the open skies and patchwork fields to quaint small towns and towering grain elevators, the simplicity of the landscape in rural Alberta is the essence of its charm.

For years, Alberta contemporary artist Billie Rae Busby has been putting her paintbrush to work to capture this rural charm and transform natural beauty into something tangible.

Billie Rae was born and raised in Yorkton, Saskatchewan — a small city surrounded by farmer’s fields and an economy driven mainly by agriculture. “Even though I lived right in the city, I grew up in a bit of a rural environment,” she says. “A lot of my friends were farm kids who either lived on acreages or farms.” 

But even with the influence of her farming friends at school, Billie Rae took after her mother who spent much of her time quilting, sewing and crocheting. “My mom was always doing some sort of craft when I was growing up,” she says. “Creativity was around all the time, and that has lived with me since.”

Later, after graduating from the University of Saskatchewan, Billie Rae moved to Calgary in search of a community with an arts scene that embraced her abstract outlook on the world.

“I love the bigger city, but I had a bit of nostalgia when travelling across the flat open land of Saskatchewan where I grew up."

In those early years in Calgary, Billie Rae’s mother became ill, so she found herself travelling back and forth between Alberta and Saskatchewan to visit. It was on these difficult journeys that Billie Rae found a niche for her artwork. “I love the bigger city, but I had a bit of nostalgia when travelling across the flat open land of Saskatchewan where I grew up,” she says. “I felt a connection to the prairies during my long drives and realized that I missed the openness of the land that allows your imagination to wander.”

She was inspired and set out to find a new way to paint the prairies and bring them to life for others who are longing for the simplicity and openness of a rural landscape.

Using a hard-edged painting technique with acrylic paint and masking tape, Billie Rae layers shapes and lines over one another to play out a scene or a mood. “Sometimes these concepts might come from my imagination, a memory or a photo of a real place,” she says. “And most times, I generally don’t know exactly what I want it to look like in the end. I just start putting the shapes and colours down and let the painting take me in a particular direction.”

For the last few years, Billie Rae has made a name for herself as a full-time artist in Calgary, painting abstract landscapes of the Canadian Prairies. A few noteworthy pieces include a northern lights painting that was made into a carpet design for Canada House in London, England as well as a four-panel installation at the new BMO Centre for the Calgary Stampede permanent art collection. “These pieces are validation that I’ve been on the right track where people liked them so much they wanted to use them as a way to express what Canada is like for visitors to see.”

But one of her favourite pieces to date is a rural skyline piece that captures the colours and essence of the prairies, titled Extended Summer Hours. “To me, this painting shows how it feels when we have those long summer days and how they’re full of possibility,” says Billie Rae. This is the piece printed on the front of Vision Credit Union’s newest member cards.

Since she was a young girl, Billie Rae has taken her appreciation of rural living and the simple landscapes that surround us to new levels with her art, where every person who looks at a piece instantly feels a connection. “I hope everyone who sees my work sees how fortunate we are to live in Western Canada,” she says. “I hope they see a memory or it evokes something that was once special to them like my early life in the prairies was for me.”

A photo of Billie Rae Busby's favourite piece, Extended Summer Hours, as seen on Vision Credit Union's newest member cards.