Radiant (2017)
66 x 79 inches
Acrylic on canvas

“Woolfitt is not just a master craftsman - he is an inspired and profound artist.”
- Ken Carpenter

“His works are an endless, in-depth self-exploration in search of self-knowledge - the sign of a true artist, an authentic master.”
- Donald Kuspit, Therapeutic Abstraction: Ben Woolfitt’s Paintings and Drawings, 2018

the modern.toronto is excited to present Ben Woolfitt, Recent Paintings & Drawings.  The exhibit is comprised of 19 paintings, 2011 – 2019, and 14 drawings, 2006 - 2019.  Inspired by the Color Field paintings of Hofmann, Louis, Olitski and Rothko, Woolfitt’s abstractions are teeming with luscious sensuality, nuanced gestures, ravishing surfaces and subtle emotions that emerge from the depths of canvas and paper. In Dennis Reid’s A History of Canadian Painting, Reid writes that “He {Woolfitt} moved quickly from strength to strength, and by the end of the decade {90’s} he clearly was one of the procedural painters in Toronto whose work has to be seen.” Reid identifies Woolfitt as a “procedural painter” meaning that the practical as well as the technical abilities are contained within his art practice while balanced with a sense of the artist’s ritual or ceremony. 

Ken Carpenter in his essay Ben Woolfitt As Intimist, 2003, expands upon Reid’s thought "From this point on there are two quite different paradigms informing Woolfitt’s artistic practice. One is a modernist tendency, focused on mining the potential of the medium, however much that potential might be redefined in the process of conceiving and making the work. The other is a post-modernist orientation, concerned with questions of identity and self, drawn to narrative, dwelling on the artist’s inner world, and eventually working to combine image with text." Woolfitt’s paintings are produced over a period of months with multiple layers of acrylic on canvas building a seductive impasto surface.  In recent years, Woolfitt has incorporated flanges instead of a frame allowing the pigment to overflow the painting’s boundary, almost flowing simultaneously into and out of the wall.  The imagery of the paintings luxuriates in the narrative of their own construction.

Donald Kuspit’s essay in the new book Ben Woolfitt’s Dream Drawings, writes “One might think of the drawings as faded flowers preserved – crushed? – between the pages of a dream diary, and as such memento mori.”  The daily morning drawings are in stark contrast to his paintings, somber dreams contained within sketch books of silver leaf, hand-written words or poetic fragments and frottage -- placing screens, string, crumpled paper under the page and rubbing the surface with graphite or black chalk.  There is an intimacy, unlike the paintings, that is found in a smudge of the artist’s fingerprint on the paper that relates to the written date and text bringing the viewer nearer to the artist’s procedure.

About the Artist

Born in Saskatchewan, Woolfitt has lived and worked in Toronto since 1965 when he studied at Founders College, York University.  Woolfitt has had 25 solo exhibitions and 15 group exhibitions in Canada, Japan, Thailand and the US.  He is included in over 15 museum and private collections internationally, including the MacLaren Art Centre, Hart House at the University of Toronto, the Remai Modern and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, all in Canada. Early in his career, he founded and taught at Woolfitt’s School of Contemporary Painting and in 1978, established Woolfitt’s Art Supplies.  Having recently closed the art supply business, Woolfitt now lives in Toronto and New York City, and in 2017 founded the modern.toronto.