Last year, I was given the opportunity to write a new artist bio for the multitalented graphic artist Bubzee.
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Born from the wild reaches of BC’s Slocan Valley, where she was raised on Sinixt land, Bubzee limns the otherworldly and chimeric with vivid linework and bold, flowing graphics. Her imagery finds its way onto countless surfaces, from public murals and wheatpaste street art to prints, textiles, paintings, and drawings. Over decades of practice, she’s honed a powerful yet delicate style that reflects her connection to rural life and the elements, with visions of femininity, magic, and sacredness woven together like apparitions.
Entwining contrasts of light and dark, Bubzee’s practice has blossomed from its beginnings in printmaking and street art to a career tattooing her intricate pieces and creating paintings that incorporate collage, found objects and plant materials. In her work, patterns emerge fluidly from the natural world and its inhabitants: plants, birds, beasts, and sky mingle with mysterious figures’ flowing hair and eloquent faces. Compositions incorporating the symmetry and symbols of paganism and witchcraft appear miragelike on walls, benches, fabric, paper, wood, and tattooed skin. Ancestral archetypes often appear in Bubzee’s intuitively charged work, amidst leaves, petals and other living things. These figures of wisdom and strength link past and present, evoking the cyclical nature of our universe and the beings that inhabit it.
Largely self-taught in her craft, Bubzee’s main inspirations are her community of fellow artists, who form a network of support and learning through collective skill-sharing. A frequent traveler, her itinerant lifestyle has connected her with artistic kin and long-term synergistic relationships. Her collaboratively-developed projects encompass drawings, collage, paintings, and portrait photographs, as well as public murals painted in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and communities along BC’s coast.