John Will
(1939–)
John Will
1939–
John Will (1939– ) is a painter, performance artist, printmaker, and well-known trickster. Since the 1960s, he has been producing intuitive text- and image-based paintings and works on paper. His body of work is subversive, humorously critiques popular culture, and disregards the boundaries between life and art.
Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Will obtained a BA from the University of Northern Michigan in 1961 and an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1963. From 1963 to 1964, he was a Fulbright Fellow to Amsterdam, and from 1970 to 1971, he was a Ford Foundation Printer Fellow at the Tamarind Institute. In 1971, Will moved to Canada to teach at the University of Calgary where he became an iconic figure in the local arts scene. He went on to teach at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Emily Carr School of Art.
Will’s work has been exhibited across Canada and the United States in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He has been a Visiting Artist at over thirty institutions, and his work has been collected by over forty museums, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Will is currently represented by Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles and Norberg Hall Gallery (formerly Jarvis Hall Gallery) in Calgary. He continues to live and work in Calgary.