About Bud Young

    I'll endeavour to tell you about "most" of my 60-odd years in this weird and wondrous world.

    In 1944 I was born into a farming family in southern Manitoba near the small village of High Bluff. Growing up on a farm meant you learned to fix, repair or build whatever you needed to keep operating. Innovation, imagination and creativity followed through my many endeavors and I feel has emerged into my carving.

    Living close to the Delta Marsh in the south end of Lake Manitoba allowed me to learn the arts of hunting and fishing from my father, both of which I've enjoyed for many years. I suppose you could say these passions were joined with playing baseball and rodeo in my teens and twenties.

    For a half dozen years after leaving school I worked in the oil fields on heavy equipment on road and bush work, and also in building construction. I then returned to the family farm and operated it until 1990; it was another passion and joy in my life.

    My carving started in 1990. Decorative decoys were the first challenges, followed by other carving. Soapstone entered the realm of my abilities because of the insistence of friend and fellow carver Kevin Peters. He was right; something hidden in stone can be coaxed out if the spirit is willing and if your mind is open to all possibilities. Thanks, Kevin.

    I moved to the Yukon Territory in 2002 from Christina Lake, B.C. and have become involved with the Yukon Arts Society, the Yukon Humane Society as a volunteer the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous as a Board member and a member of Yukon Artists @ Work, an artist-run co-op and gallery which has a membership of about 40 artists of all mediums.

    My work is scattered over North America, Europe and Asia. The Yukon Territorial Government has purchased many of my pieces as gifts for visiting foreign dignitaries and Canadian ministers. The most appreciated award I have received was the People's Choice Award at the Great Northern Arts Festival 2006 in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. I was also privileged to be one of five Yukon artists chosen to participate in a two-week trip in March of 2008 to Salekhard, Russia, for a collaboration with fifteen Siberian artists to complete a single piece of art work that is currently on tour in Russia.

    I hope you enjoy my art as I have enjoyed creating it. Just a closing thought from me to you: "Anything and everything is possible." May the good spirits walk with you and the bad ones fall behind.