Ken Bourassa: The paint doctor is in

By Miriam Ostermann, Associate Editor

Creativity and culture played a large part in Ken Bourassa’s upbringing. The Alberta artist can’t remember a time when he wasn’t playing music or creating art.
Yet when he won Canada’s largest national scholarship while attending the Alberta College of Art, Bourassa didn’t just flourish – he was catapulted into the spotlight, transforming his role as an artist into becoming a public figure for the arts by appearing in magazines and newspapers.
Shortly after, Bourassa began teaching across the province before becoming manager of two large picture framing facilities that allowed him to remain active within the arts, learn the business side of the industry, and network with companies and corporations. Eventually Bourassa was hired to create fine art for corporations – including Shell Canada – where the then 20-something ambitious Bourassa would go on to create thousands of pieces, from paintings to sculptures to product photography.
“Most people, they do a painting and try to sell it; suddenly I was getting the vice president (of Shell Canada) phoning me at home on Sunday saying I want one of these and these and these, and I was really ambitious,” remembered Bourassa.
“What I really learned about was the business of art and I realized that making a painting is great, but the second you put your brush down your job is to figure out a way to sell it to people. Once you had your painting you had to figure out how to do the business stuff and that was really fascinating.”
Years later, Bourassa decided to fulfill his dream and opened up Atlantis Fine Framing and Art Studio, an art gallery and art store, with full framing services and art lessons. It wasn’t until 20 years later that the father of four – ranging in age from six months to 21 years – left the businesses and accepted the job of executive director with the Wheatland Society of Arts in Strathmore after having been involved with the group for years.
Over the past year, Bourassa has left his mark in the community with the Canada 150 mural project, the graffiti look in the Strathmore Municipal Library’s teen area and pilot projects with the Siksika Outreach School.
The jack-of-all-trades, who prides himself in exploring nearly every art medium – water colour, oil and acrylic painting, encaustic technique, sculpture, pottery and even jewelry – graduated at age 21 and shortly after began creating literally thousands of pieces for corporations – mainly Shell Canada.
“I’ve done so much work and I’ve really spent much of my career studying techniques and styles, and I almost consider myself more of a paint doctor,” he said. “One of the things I really worked on is not only understanding the history and the philosophy of art, but I spent a couple decades really researching how stuff goes together so that I know everything about what goes into all the mediums. As a creative artist I always felt like you should really try to do a little of everything. As a result, I think I’m close to mastering almost every area of two- and three-dimensional art.”