Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts - Studio Art York University - Keele Campus, Canada

Mould your artistic style by carving, painting, photographing and printing across diverse mediums in Canada's premier arts creation facilities. This studio-based program prepares you for a career creating change across industries as a practicing artist, educator, curator, entrepreneur or researcher. With guidance from world-renowned artists, you’ll have the opportunity to display your works at curated public art exhibitions on campus and across the city. 

The AMPD Advantage:

• Class size is capped at 25 students, promoting a personalized learning experience. 
• Access to the most acclaimed facilities in Canada, including Canada’s first Digital Sculpture Laboratory dedicated to the convergence of digital and physical art.   
• Professional Practices seminar course exploring grant writing, contracts, intellectual property, exhibition proposals, networking, documentation archive, marketing and business development.

Program Structure

Students in the Visual Arts - Studio (BFA) program complete a fundamentals studio course in their first term that introduces them to the visual arts studios, faculty members and a spectrum of production methods addressing two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) elements of time in artmaking. An established theme provides students with a starting point for research, conceptualization and the exploration of fundamental processes to visualize their creative ideas.

After completing a common first year, students choose to specialize in one or more visual arts areas. In the fourth year, students complete a capstone studio course designed to allow senior-level students to develop an independent studio practice, furthering their creative, conceptual and technical skills in both an area-specific medium and an interdisciplinary focus.  Over the years, students develop a self-directed, cohesive body of work while making connections between their practice and a broader context of contemporary art and ideas.

Featured Facilities

Students in the  Visual Arts - Studio (BFA) program explore and create in facilities unrivalled in any Canadian university, including the Joan Goldfarb Visual Arts Study Centre; the L. L. Odette Centre for Sculpture; spacious, state-of-the-art studios; five student-run exhibition galleries and the award-winning Art Gallery of York University.

The Visual Arts - Studio Art (BFA) program offers high-quality, state-of-the-art visual arts facilities supported by technicians with extensive after-hours access offering access to dedicated studios in:

• Digital and analogue photography, printmaking (silkscreen, lithography, intaglio);
• Drawing (conceptual and life model);
• Painting (abstract and figurative);
• Time-based arts (video and performance); and
• Sculpture (metal, foundry, carving, modelling, wood, 3D printing, ceramics, etc.).