York University
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John MacGregor (1944–2019) was an artist and art educator known for his paintings, prints, and sculptures that focus on representing mundane objects in a manner that provocatively communicates new ways of thinking about the world. He is most well-known for his body of work exploring the concept of time.

Born in Dorking, England, in 1944, MacGregor immigrated to Canada with his family in 1948. He spent much of his childhood in Timmins, Ontario, before moving to Toronto. He trained at Central Technical School in Toronto, gaining a background in art history and psychiatry. His first solo exhibition was held in 1967 at Hart House Gallery in Toronto. From 1968 to 1987, he was represented by Issacs Gallery in Toronto and became a member of the Issacs Gallery Group. 

MacGregor’s early work used daily objects, such as furniture, to draw sexual analogies that were at once fascinating and humorous. In the mid-1970s, he began creating highly colour saturated abstractions. He believed that his departure from figuration gave him the freedom to think and act differently. In 1993, his practice shifted to more centrally explore the theme of time in his paintings and drawings. Dissatisfied with the rigid time-based structures that govern our lives, his work sought to provide another way to think about time. Returning to figuration, he depicted common objects, such as clocks, in an obscure fashion, dissolving their form into an expression of line and colour. At this time, he also began creating large-scale sculptures made of molded paper pulp and plywood. 

In addition to his career as an artist, MacGregor taught at many universities in Toronto, including the New School of Art, York University, the Ontario College of Art and Design, and the University of Toronto. He published his book The Discovery of the Art of the Insane in 1989. His work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, France, and Spain in exhibitions such as John MacGregor, A Survey, a travelling exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1983, and John MacGregor: Painter as Time Traveller, an exhibition curated by Joan Murray at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa in 1993. His work is held in the public collections at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, among others.