Nova Scotia

John Richard Fox was born on July 26, 1927, in Montreal and was educated at McGill University from 1945 to 1946. After deciding to become an artist, he attended the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1946 to 1949, studying under Goodridge Roberts, who taught him about color and how it could structure a painting. He worked as a teaching assistant to John Lyman at the school and won a British Council Scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London from 1952 to 1953. He had his first solo exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1952 and was awarded the Greenshields Foundation Grant in 1955. The National Gallery of Canada purchased his work that same year.

Fox returned to Montreal in 1956 and had solo exhibitions at Watson Galleries in 1957, Laing Galleries in 1959, and Continental Galleries in Montreal, which became his regular dealer. He had a second exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1963 and received a major mural commission in 1964. He exhibited with Roberts Gallery in Toronto from 1965 to 1968. In the late 1960s, he began making bronze sculpture but became dissatisfied with representational work. From 1972 to 1986, he turned to lyrical abstraction in large canvases, creating work influenced by international and American abstract art.

In 1965, Fox began teaching at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. In 1970, he started teaching at Concordia University, where he was made Associate Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department in 1975 and Department Chair in 1980, serving as Head until his retirement in 1998. During this period, he exhibited with Galerie Marlborough-Godard in Montreal in 1973 and Mira Godard Gallery in Toronto in 1986. His abstract work developed from abstract impressionism to abstraction incorporating collage elements. He used various tools including spray guns, sponges, cardboard, knives, masking tape, and collage to create rich, textured surfaces.

From 1987 until his death in 2008, Fox returned to representational painting. He had many solo exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver during the 1990s and 2000s. Venice held particular significance for his work. He first visited in 1953 and 1955, again in 1963, and then annually from 1977 onward. He married Sandra Paikowsky in Venice in 1982. John Richard Fox died in Venice on June 16, 2008, and his ashes were placed in the main cemetery there. A posthumous exhibition of his Venetian work titled "John Fox: A Painter in Venice" was held at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton in 2025.