Mould your artistic style by casting, carving, painting, and printing across diverse mediums in Canada's premier arts creation facilities. The 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, display works at curated public art exhibitions on campus, across the City, and in downtown Toronto.    

The AMPD Advantage:  

• Class size is capped at 25 students, promoting a personalized learning experience.   
• Highest retention rate on campus with over 90% of entering students completing their degree.  
• 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.).