Kushana Bush draws on a range of influences in her skilfully created gouache paintings, but her primary focus is the human figure, sometimes alone or, more frequently, part of a larger crowd. Her palette of soft, delicate colours is distinctive and highlights the elaborate gestures or poses of her subjects, who are engaged in mysterious actions, and set in an indeterminate era. Bush deliberately draws on a range of cultural references, mixing elements from Giotto's frescoes, Japanese Shunga art, Indo-Persian miniatures, Dutch religious paintings, Korean still life and folk art, and the painting of British artist Stanley Spencer. Using a flat picture plane, she includes patterns resembling decorative tiles or porcelain ware. Amid this detail and the faint suggestion of a narrative, she hints at an underlying violence through the use of humour and absurdity. Her figures are often wounded and vulnerable, partially clothed, and playing out themes of power, conformism and sexuality.

Bush regularly exhibits throughout New Zealand and Australia. In 2009 she worked in South Korea at the National Art Studio, Changdong, Seoul. That same year she won the Art and Australia Contemporary Art Award. Since then Bush was the 2011 Frances Hodgkins Fellow at The University of Otago and was awarded the Arts Foundation New Zealand New Generation Award in 2013. She exhibited 12 paintings at the 2014 Edinburgh Art Festival and, in 2017, her work was the subject of the solo exhibition 'The Burning Hours' at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in early 2017.