(1939-2026)
Widely celebrated as a trickster and incisive wordsmith, Will’s practice focuses on text-based paintings and works on paper, reconstructing fragments of language into witty, darkly humorous, and poignant reflections. John Will is known for his humour, and how he plays with notions of truth, representation, fact and fiction. His satirical and insightful paintings and works on paper are created through a process of collecting fragments of language found in a wide variety of sources: news, popular media, adages and slang amongst others. His photographic practice is also based on the idea of the found photograph, images that are often re-worked and overlaid with text, to create insightful, often hysterical and sometimes uncomfortable, new interpretations.
John Will is a senior Alberta painter, photographer, printmaker, and performance artist whose career spans more than six decades. 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, was a Ford Foundation Print Fellow at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1971, Will moved to Canada to teach at the University of Calgary where he became an iconic figure in the local arts scene. Teaching from 1971-19997, Will has had a profound impact on the development of artists and the art community in Calgary and across Alberta. His work is held in major public and private collections across North America, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Alberta, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, New York Public Library, Nickle Galleries, Art Institute of Chicago, and Glenbow Museum, among others.
