York Wilson

Ronald York Wilson , also known as R. York Wilson, (December 6, 1907 – February 10, 1984) was a Canadian painter and muralist.

Career York Wilson was trained at the Central Technical School, but he was mainly self-taught. He began as a commercial artist and illustrator, working for Brigden's engraving house in Toronto (1926) where he was influenced by Charles Comfort and Will Ogilvie, then at Sampson-Matthews Limited. He took night classes at the Ontario College of Art, and later at the Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1927, Wilson began working in Detroit where he learned illustration and lettering and was also exposed to museums and books about fine art. However, he lost his job due to the Great Depression and returned to Canada in 1930. His paintings from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s were representational and even, social realist and satirical, as, for instance, his Welfare Worker (1941). He also a member of the Ontario Society of Artists (1942) and its President (1946–1948) as well as the Canadian Group of Painters. second husband), the 'York Wilson Endowment Award' was established with the Canada Council for the Arts.

In 2011, the York Wilson Foundation for Visual Arts was created to maintain his artistic legacy, as well as offering access to Wilson's body of work for public engagement and education. Since 2011, it has actively worked on donating hundreds of artworks by the artist, and maintained a central source of research material on the artist, including images of artworks, video, and research and writing.

In 2016, Linda Jansma curated a show of 15 paintings by Wilson, titled York Wilson: A Legacy, for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa.

In 2017, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery announced an outstanding gift from the York Wilson Foundation for the Visual Arts. The donation, consisting of over 850 works of art, financial support for programming, and a digital archive of the artist's works, represents the largest single collection of York Wilson's work.