Ben Woolfitt was born in Saskatchewan 1946. Since 1965 Woolfitt has lived in Toronto where he studied at Founders College, York University.

 

As a modernist and post-modernist painter, Woolfitt has been influenced by colour field painting since the 1960s. The works of Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Hans Hofmann, Jules Olitski, and later by Antonio Tapies have been of particular interest informing Woolfitt’s career.

 

In 1972 he founded Woolfitt’s School of Contemporary Painting, where he taught until 1979. He also established Woolfitt’s Fine Art Supplies in 1978, an international distributor of artist materials which he managed until it was sold in 2014. The modern.toronto—founded by Woolfitt in 2017—is a museum dedicated to the exhibition of non-objective painting.

 

Woolfitt has had twenty-five solo exhibitions—notably Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms and Series, a 2021 solo exhibition of drawings at the Art Gallery of Ontario—and has been part of fifteen group exhibitions in Canada, Japan, Thailand, and the United States of America. His paintings are held in numerous corporate and private collections internationally, and in museums including the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario, Hart House at the University of Toronto, the Remai Modern, Saskatoon, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario.