Born in Liverpool in 1964, Bushe grew up in Aberdeenshire, before graduating in painting at Edinburgh College of Art in 1990. Having simultaneously undertaken a career as artist and art lecturer, he taught painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen; was Head of Fine Art at the University of Chichester; and lectured at Kent Institute of Art and Design and Oxford Brookes University. Bushe returned to Scotland in 2007 to become the Coordinator of Short Courses at ECA and is currently a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. He was President of Visual Arts Scotland from 2013 to 2016 and was Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy from 2018 to 2021.
Bushe’s practice centres on the depiction of detailed, suggestive narratives, frequently set within expansive architectonic constructions. His work has won several national awards including the inaugural W. Gordon Smith Painting Prize in 2017 a prize-winner at John Moores Painting Prize 2020 in Liverpool, and the Highly Commended prize at Contemporary British Painting in Huddersfield 2023.

Artist photo credit - @helenpughphotography