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"Carving"
Dennis Budgen, "Carving," 1992, ink line and watercolour, 11 x 14 inches.
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"Fishing, Killbear Provincial Park"
Dennis Budgen, "Fishing, Killbear Provincial Park," 2005, digital composition of ink line and watercolour illustrations, 36 x 160 inches.
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"Carving"
Dennis Budgen, "Carving," 1992, ink line and watercolour, 11 x 14 inches.
DENNIS BUDGEN, A Fine Line: Works by Dennis Budgen
Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts (Now the Museum of Contemporary Art - Calgary)
Nov 17, 2005 — Jan 7, 2006
BY Caterina Pizanias
A Fine Line: Works by Dennis Budgen is the final exhibit in the year-long series celebrating Alberta's Centennial at the Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts. Curated by Alison Miyauchi, it features more than 100 sketches, working drawings, prints, and paintings produced by Calgary illustrator Dennis Budgen during his 26-year career. In each work on exhibit, Budgen's unique temperament and skills infuse his illustrations with feelings and mood, bringing scientific information to life.
Natural history illustrations that have had the benefit of subjective understanding have left their mark as both historic documents and art objects — from the charcoal drawings on the walls of Neolithic caves to the botanical illustrations in ancient herbals and coastal profiles in voyagers' documenta. Today, the work of first rate illustrators like Budgen brings to the fore the shortcomings of photography to capture not just the details but the intricacy in nature. Budgen proudly stands in a long line of artists that balance the requirements of science with our need for beauty.
Budgen was born in Edmonton and grew up in a farm eighty miles northwest of that city in a supportive, close knit family. His family stood by him when he decided to leave the farm and study art at the Alberta College of Art and Design, where he has been teaching Visual Communications since the 1980s. He could have become a succesful painter but he chose illustration because, he says, "I really enjoy solving problems." Curator Miyauchi notes that, "in his own practice and as an educator, he emphasizes the role and importance of research, exploration, and development when approaching any visual problem. This intellectual rigour is found throughout his work and is evidenced in his fidelity to a subject."
There have been many influences in Budgen's work, from Leonardo da Vinci to James Fenwick Lansdowne. Over the years his love of nature, acute sense of observation, graceful drawing, meticulous brushwork, and above all his ability to patiently "listen to his clients" have guided the development of his personal visual vocabulary, natural history illustration. His major commissions include the 63-foot long mural at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, a poster for the Geological Survey of Canada, and illustrations for the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology's The Land Before Us: A Geological History of Alberta — a "definitive project" in Budgen's words, where "more in-depth interpretive work was required, taking in so much information and boiling it down into a reconstruction of the paleontological environments." Another commission, a naturalist sketchbook for Katnnilik Park, a new World Heritage Site on Baffin Island, won Budgen an Award of Excellence from Communication Artsmagazine, bringing international recognition to his artistry and assignments from Field & Stream and Outdoor Life.
A Fine Line not only documents Budgen's long and productive career, it allows viewers an opportunity to discern the ability of illustration to capture nature in its complexity and glory. Instead of snapshots, Budgen offers us insights into our continued relationship and inter-dependence with nature.