BEN WOOLFITT
Ben Woolfitt
Radiant Reflections
On the occasion of the online Exhibition at David Richard Gallery LLC from October 3 to November 15, 2025.
Essay © David Eichholtz
About the Exhibition:
Radiant Reflections is the newest series of paintings by Canadian artist, Ben Woolfitt and his second solo exhibition with David Richard Gallery. The presentation includes 11 paintings created during 2024 and 2025 that range in size from 30 x 40 inches to the largest measuring 60 x 72, a new standard size for Woolfitt who’s studio practice is split between Toronto and New York City. Also included is one additional large painting from 2023, Power of Light, which could possibly be considered the impetus and point of departure for this new series of paintings in regard to formalist concerns of materials, processes, and aesthetics. The presentation and essay reveal how dualities abound in Woolfitt’s life and work, just as the title, Radiant Reflections, can refer to a visible, external light bouncing off a surface as well as imperceptible introspection and joyful memories.
About Ben Woolfit’s Process and Paintings:
Aesthetically, Woolfitt is always exploring and creating non-objective abstraction while mining art history, alternative materials, and technology to achieve that outcome. He was inspired largely by Color Field and optical painting by iconic masters from the 1960s and 70s, including Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Jules Olitski and Ronald Davis, among others. Woolfitt’s process-driven paintings begin and end with the physical aspects of surface, color, and light while the aesthetic and mood for each artwork comes out of memory and existential events.
Further to the last point above, art historian, Ken Carpenter wrote in 2003 the following insightful passage in a biography for Woolfitt that not only chronicled his career and approach to art making but explained the shift to his process in the 1980s and foreshadowed this pivotal moment in time in the artist’s long creative career.
The “focus on the artist’s most intimate thoughts and feelings was heightened after the death of his mother in 1980. […] The high detachment of his previous work gave way to more visceral feelings: not just of joy or vitality, but also of loss and vulnerability. From this point on there are two quite different paradigms informing Woolfitt’s artistic practice. One is a modernist tendency, focused on mining the potential of the medium, however much that potential might be redefined in the process of conceiving and making the work. The other is a post-modernist orientation, concerned with questions of identity and self, drawn to narrative, dwelling on the artist’s inner world, and eventually working to combine image with text.” [1]
The new paintings in this presentation start with waves and swaths of gesso that provide the first step in his process. Applying pigment in layers with each mark and gesture in response to the prior additions, the colors and imagery organically evolve filling the canvas and running off the edges in every direction. The variety of media, including acrylic paint, diverse and technical new media, additives and gels, dry pigment, metallic leaf, and graphite combined with the canvas filling, all over painting approach makes each work dynamic, full of intrigue with the color and imagery extending beyond the canvas edges. Depending upon the range of palettes, from black and white, to blue, black and white, or black and gold, each painting having sprays of colors in the grounds or moving toward the surface or inward from the perimeters with clusters of marks evokes astral skies, the cosmos, or nautical vegetation and creatures deep in the sea.
The organic process of building the surfaces to provide texture, color and reflective elements that interact with the ambient light determines whether or not the viewer is on a galactic trip or deep-sea oceanographic quests. At some point Woolfitt’s process determines which journey and the tenor of the painting directing the viewer towards thoughts of an abyss, emptiness and voids, or surreal and otherworldly experiences. These decisions and actions, whether guided by the artist’s automatism and subconscious or not then determines the degree of light versus darkness, saturated color or subtle sprays of primary hues. Even in darkness, the artist can provide just a hint of light, an incentive for hope and possibilities. However, light versus dark can also have metaphysical and emotional connotations for the artist, and viewer. It all depends on one’s passions, experiences, and memories.
The sprays of color around the perimeter of the canvas revisits art history again, the center versus the edges of a painting and the works of Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Sam Francis, and others from the 1960s and 70s. Their argument was expand the composition beyond the center outward to the perimeter, no limitations, flattening and using all of the canvas, creating focal points not necessarily centrally located, and thereby challenging symmetry and traditional figure ground relationships.
Woolfitt approaches the edges of the canvas a little differently in that there is not a deliberate central void or otherwise demure, empty canvas. Instead, he continues to build and layer the modeling pastes, gels, and other additives to the medium to create texture, palpable surfaces, and illusory depth and distortions suggesting vast spaces beyond the edges, much like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko did with their canvas-filling, all over painting approach. Woolfitt’s edge treatments of late around the perimeter with sprays of bright and saturated color pigments are almost like a ray of breaking light piercing the darkness as though a Dan Flavin installation or James Turrell or Robert Irwin intervention was in the distance far behind the canvas and the faint light was pushing its way around the perimeter.
The net effect of the perimeter sprays for Woolfitt is they perpetuate a sense of vastness across the canvas, enormity beyond human scale and comprehension, a nod to the sublime. He utilizes all of the tools at hand creating the suggestion and possibility of a vast galactic or deep oceanic odyssey opening and inviting the viewer to step into the canvas.
In a recent discussion with Woolfitt [2] he commented that in the most recent 5 or 6 paintings in 2025, he changed pigment sources and was experimenting with paints from four different manufacturers that were producing highly reflective surfaces, which he liked. Woolfitt has always been interested in incorporating diverse sources of lumines-
cence and reflectivity in his compositions, such as metallic paints, metallic leaf, translucent polymers and gels that allowed ambient light to penetrate the surface of the paintings and create an inner glow.
Woolfitt also noted that his “paintings are approaching the drawings.” The artist has rigorously maintained two parallel creative practices for several decades: daily drawings in bound notebooks and paintings on canvas and other supports.
Drawings are not included in this exhibition, but a large number were in his first solo exhibition with the gallery, Blue Passage, in November 2023. Each drawing by Woolfitt is a unique creation, not a prelude to nor a study for any particular painting, yet, aesthetically, very much related to the paintings with the focus on surfaces, color and light with a fourth element, time which enables a patina to develop on the silver surface. Each rendering is created using the technique of ‘frottage’ that captures the impressions of screens, wire mesh, organic, or crumpled materials behind the drawing paper and provides the surface texture and imagery after rubbing the surfaces of paper and silver leaf with graphite and/or dry pigment. The drawings also incorporate poignant text written rather small and randomly placed based on the composition, including the date and city of creation. While certain media may be common between the canvas versus paper supports, the imagery develops on the paper with a vision or intentionality within the artist’s mind that explores fissures and eruptions, horizon lines, repetition of forms, and large passages of color that are real or metaphorical and all from memory.
The drawings emerged in the early 1980s following his mother’s death and became Woolfitt’s therapy and way to express his loss while also celebrating her and her life. The drawings have persisted and become his personal therapy and release to also mourn the loss and celebrate the life of his sister in 1996 and father in 1999. Woolfitt’s drawings and numerous drawing books that document decades of his visual explorations along with his inner and most intimate personal thoughts were prominently featured in his solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto from July 2021 through March 2022. Donald Kuspit, art critic and historian, has written extensively, including several books, about Ben Woolfitt’s artworks and career. Recently, he wrote a feature piece about Woolfitt, his drawings, and personal loss, Art As A Defense Against Death And Personal Loss: Ben Woolfitt’s Alchemical Drawings, published October 21, 2024 in WhiteHot Magazine [3].
Notes:
[1] Carpenter, Ken, Ben Woolfitt as Intimist, 2003, Gallery One Editions, Toronto.
[2] September 29, 2025 phone conversation.
[3]. https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/drawings-article-by-donald-kuspit/6596#:~:text=Woolfitt’s%20life%20 is%20a%20sum,and%20suffering%20inflicted%20by%20life.
By David Eichholtz New York
Ben Woolfitt
Illumination I , 2024
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 72”
Ben Woolfitt
Blue Mist III , 2024`
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt
Blue Mist VII , 2024`
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt
Blue Mist IV , 2024`
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt
Sublime Blue , 2025
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30”
Ben Woolfitt
Glacial Blue , 2025
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt Power of Light , 2023
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 72”
Ben Woolfitt Twist , 2025
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt Mystery , 2025
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt Magic , 2025
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt In Black , 2024
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 36”
Ben Woolfitt Into the Deep , 2024
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 48”
BEN WOOLFITT
BIO
Ben Woolfitt, Modernist and Post-Modernist Painter born in Saskatchewan, Canada, 1946. Since 1965 Woolfitt has lived in Toronto when he enrolled at Founders College, York Universi-ty. In 1972 founded Woolfitt’s School of Con-temporary Painting, where he taught until 1979. He established Woolfitt’s Fine Art Supplies in 1978, an international distributor of artist mate-rials which he managed until it was sold in 2014. The modern.toronto , a museum dedicated to the exhibition of non-objective painting was founded by Woolfitt in 2017. Since the 1960’s Woolfitt was influenced by Color Field painting, especially the works of Mark Rothko, Morris Lou-is, Hans Hofmann and Jules Olitski and later by Antonio Tapies. Woolfitt has had 25 solo exhibi-tions and 15 group exhibitions in Canada, Ja-pan, Thailand and the USA. Most recently at major solo exhibition of abstract drawings at the Art Gallery of Ontario. His paintings are in nu-merous museums and corporate and private collections internationally, including Canadian collections at The MacLaren Art Centre, Hart House at the University of Toronto, The Remai Modern and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Ben Woolfitt is now represented by the David Richard Galleries in Chelsea, NYC.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
• 2025 David Richard Galleries, NYC
• 2023 David Richard Galleries, NYC
• 2021 Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
• 2019 modern.toronto, Toronto
• 2018 Oeno Gallery, Toronto
• 2017 Richard Rhodes Gallery, Toronto
• 2014 DeLuca Fine Art Gallery, Toronto
• 2011 Prince Takamado Gallery, Japan (Canadian Embassy)
• 2009 Moore Gallery, Toronto
• 2009 Oeno Gallery, Toronto
• 2007 Bangkok University Gallery, Bang-kok
• 2005 Moore gallery, Toronto
• 2004 Gallery One, Toronto
• 2002 Carlo Alessi Unpublished, New York (October)
• 2002 Prince Arthur Gallery, Toronto (November 9-16)
• 2001 Prince Arthur Gallery, Toronto
• 1995 Baird Gallery, St. Johns
• 1987 Bowen Gallery, Toronto
• 1982 Private Exhibition, Toronto
• 1981 Vivaxis, Toronto
• 1980 Wingfield, Toronto
• 1978 Vivaxis, Toronto
• 1977 Gallery O (Olga Korper), Toronto
• 1976 Gallery O (Olga Korper), Toronto
• 1976 Phoenix Theatre, Toronto
• 1975 The New York Gallery, Rochester
• 1974 Gallery O (Olga Korper), Toronto
• 1973 Toronto Center of the Arts
• 1971 Hart House, University of Toronto.
• 1969 Founders College, York University, Toronto
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
• Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC
• Hart House, University of Toronto, To-ronto, On.
• Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Barrie, On.
• Remai Modern Art Gallery of Saskatch-ewan
• MacLaren Art Gallery, Barrie, Ontario
BOOKS
• Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms and Series (AGO & Goose Lane Editions, 2021)
• Ben Woolfitt: Drawings by Donald Kuspit (modern.toronto, 2019)
• Ben Woolfitt: Paintings by Donald Kuspit (Epiphany Editions, 2018)
• Musings by Ben Woolfitt (Prince Taka-mado Gallery, 2011)
• Ben Woolfitt as Intimist by Ken Carpen-ter (Gallery One Editions, 2003)
