Derek Michael Besant is an innovative Canadian artist living in Calgary, Alberta who, since the 1980s, has created prints, watercolours and large-scale art, shown in exhibitions and as public art projects in Canada and abroad. Since the mid-1990s, he has developed working with the new technology available in photographic imaging to create unusual experimental prints and print installations.
Career
Besant studied at University of Calgary, where he received a BFA Honours in 1973 and continued with Graduate Studies in 1974. He was Exhibitions Designer for the Glenbow Museum between 1973–1977. He designed exhibitions throughout the art gallery and museum spaces, along with catalogues and travelling exhibitions. The Alberta University of Art and Design invited him to teach in the Drawing / Fine Arts Department in 1977. He taught there for forty years and retired from teaching there in 2017. He was the Head of the Drawing Department between 1979–1993. Since 1980, he has been a Lecturer, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas USA; and at many other universities. He won the Alberta Governor General`s Award in Art ; the World Culture Prize in Research Arts & Letters from Milan, Italy ; the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta’s Art Achievement Award ; a Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Calgary ; and the Special Award for remarkable contribution in graphic art of the world, Bitola, Macedonia as well as many other awards for prints and world culture. He was elected a member of the Gesellschaft bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler Österreichs, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria and in 2016 as well, he was appointed to the Editorial Board of PRINTMAKING TODAY, London UK. Some of his public commissions include: The Flatiron Mural in 1980 behind Toronto’s landmark Gooderham flatiron building on Front Street, Waterfall at 15 storeys high inside the atrium of Scotia Plaza at King & Bay in 1989, two murals for Worldwide Centre at 58th and 8th Manhattan Cineplex New York City in 1989, and Train of Thought, a series of portraits at the uOttawa station of the Ottawa O-Train in 2018, as well as many other commissions. Besant's exhibitions have included: representing Canada in the Sharjah Biennial in 2003, United Arab Emirates, University of LondonGoldsmiths College, Tokyo Media-Art Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Japan, the 2004 SIGGRAPH International Conference on Computer Imaging + Interactive Technologies, Los Angeles in 2004, and in many other international exhibitions since then, including one-person shows such as 15 Restless Nights, Body Of Water, and The End Of Language which have been shown in various galleries in Canada, and in Edinburgh, Madrid, Tokyo and Cambridge, UK, among other places. In 2018, for the exhibition The Dark Woods , curated by Lubos Culen for the Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, British Columbia, he created large scale images using UV thermal transfer printing which contained embedded fragments of text from a book by Alberto Pérez-Gómez, accompanied by a video projection of dark woods environments.
Controversy
An investigation has been ordered by the City of Calgary into allegations that Besant plagiarized the content of a public art installation for which he received $20,000 in municipal funds. Besant apologized and said the incident was a misunderstanding. The mural was removed.
