Audain Faculty of Art

We invite you to explore the full potential of complex contemporary art practices in an interdisciplinary environment, leading to a top tier Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Imagine the creation of new objects, images, and sculpture via a diverse set of materials and ideas, backed by real-world conceptual, technical, and historical knowledge.

Our student environment is stimulating and supportive, and grounded by conceptual artistic expression honed by intelligent and rigorous critique.

Our Bachelor of Fine Arts program develops working artists who are productive and resourceful. Our graduates become nationally and globally recognized artists, leaders and scholars in research and material practices.

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Choose from two Fine Arts Majors and three undergraduate degree Minors:

Illustration Major

Viewing all forms of illustration, from editorial to narrative, as opportunities for cultural inquiry, our Illustration Major firmly situates illustration practice in contemporary art culture. Students are encouraged to question rather than follow, and to seek out new possibilities in the professional field.

Photography Major

Our Photography Major is a multidisciplinary program, supportive of a broader understanding of the art form. Students first acquire a mastery of traditional photographic art practices with subsequent exploration in a wide range of digital and analogue processes.

Visual Arts Major

• Promoting the connection between material practice, exhibition, and critical reflection through experimentation, our Visual Arts Major encourages experimentation and engagement with traditional as well as emerging technologies. Disciplines within in the Visual Arts Major include:

  • The Ceramics curriculum introduces a range of concepts, materials, techniques, and equipment within the context of contemporary art practices. Traditional techniques are merged with emergent applications, including digital and 3D printing.
  • Drawing instruction and practice cover a range of approaches. Traditional observational methods are complimented by experimental assignments, drawing for narrative, memory, abstraction, and conceptual methods for drawing from ideas.
  • Painting explores colour, image, structure, surface, and support, combined with a rigorous dialogue about painting today.
  • Print Media focuses on concepts and processes, as well as on the roles that printed image and text play in society. Studies in intaglio, screen print, lithography, woodcut, and book media examine historical and contemporary print directions.
  • Sculpture and Expanded Practices emphasizes interdisciplinarity and the development of ideas and concepts. The discipline reflects the diversity of contemporary and traditional practices including video, installation, electronic media and kinetics, cast production, constructed objects and others.

Minor in Art + Text

If you're a creative interested in the intersection of images and words, consider the Art + Text Minor. This minor examines how text functions in image-making, printed texts, artists books, typography, public artworks, recorded speech, and more — and will challenge how you think about the relationship between text and visuals in your own work.

Minor in Curatorial Practices

Curating is not just a job — it's an artistic practice in its own right. Our Curatorial Practices Minor combines research and practice to teach the history, theory, and real-world issues shaping the curatorial field today. Through your coursework, you'll developed an informed perspective on the art world.

Minor in Social Practice + Community Engagement (SPACE)

Engage with real-world issues through applied art, design, and media. For students who want to embed their work in the community, the Social Practice and Community Engagement (SPACE) Minor offers you the opportunity to do just that. It complements your studies with a focus on social practice, ecology and sustainability, documentary practices, and community projects.