Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

Synesthesia is not an affliction. For those rare souls who are able to harness this cross wiring of the brain and senses, it could be described as an extraordinary gift.

At least a few of the greatest musical composers in history are thought, in hindsight diagnoses made by modern medical professionals, to have possessed synesthetic abilities.

Some synesthetes associate colors with numbers, or scents with emotions; others see landscapes that reverberate as if accompanied by a symphony. Given the visual record of his creative impulses over the last half century, Scotland's adopted son, John Busby, falls somewhere in the latter category.

Busby, an octogenarian, was honored recently in the U.S. state of Wisconsin as the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's "Master Artist", placing him within the esteemed company of a couple dozen other distinguished "bird artists."

A number of factors make Busby something of an enigma: a): his work had never before, until 2009, appeared in the Woodson Museum's annual Birds In Art exhibition; b) there is a fairly significant number of North American collectors who are unfamiliar with the broad range of his painting; and c); Busby breaks from the bounds of what, typically, would be classified as "traditional" interpretations of avian subjects.

To advance bluntness here, the guy is a damned good painter whether or not birds happen to appear between the frame, though frequently they do.


John Busby is "perhaps the greatest living bird...