54 Notable alumni of OCAD University

Irene Loughlin was born on May 20, 1967, in Hamilton, Canada. Loughlin is known for her performance artwork, writings, drawings and cultural work.

Harriet Mary Ford or simply Harriet Ford was a Canadian artist who worked as a painter, muralist and jeweller. She has been described as epitomizing "the Canadian New Woman". Ford was active as a critic, writer, and lecturer, and was known in academic circles as an authority on Renaissance art and artists. Ford belonged to a number of societies and...

Henrietta Hancock Britton was an English-born Canadian artist and educator.

Sydney Strickland Tully RCA was a Canadian painter. She is known for her pastel and oil portraits, landscapes and genre pictures, and for her success in a number of exhibitions. Tully kept a studio in Toronto from 1888 until her death. Her major works include The Twilight of Life (1894), an oil painting in the collection of the Art Gallery...

Emily Louise Orr Elliott was a Canadian artist and fashion illustrator.

Tracey Johnston-Aldworth is a Canadian businesswoman and entrepreneur, based in the Waterloo region of Ontario, who is known for her public service and environmental activism. Her firm Traces Printing, founded in 1985 and emphasizing employee profit-sharing, was lauded for its efforts to recycle materials, reduce energy consumption, save water, and use ink efficiently. She was recognized by the Government of...

Lillian Sarafinchan is a painter and teacher, production design, continuity & art director and locations director.

Eva Brook Donly was a Canadian artist living in Ontario.

George Douglas Pepper RCA was a Canadian artist.

Ronald Arnott Baird RCA is a Canadian artist. He is best known for his stainless-steel sculptures. He became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1978 and the 1971 recipient of the Allied Arts Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Wallace Edwards was a Canadian children’s author and illustrator whose imagination transformed the world of animals and strange creatures for a generation of children. His illustrations don't condescend to children, they engage the imagination on multiple levels, blending childhood whimsy with adult sophistication."

Clara Isabella Harris was a Canadian artist. She worked in the media of painting, watercolours, sculpture, sketching, and wood carving.

Florence Helena McGillivray RCA, also known as F H. McGillivray, was a Canadian landscape painter known for her Post-Impressionist style. Her family home was in Whitby, Ontario. She lived in Ottawa from 1914 to 1928. She was also a teacher. In 1916, on a visit to his studio, she encouraged Tom Thomson.

Rae Johnson was a Canadian painter based in Toronto.

Eli Ilan was an Israeli sculptor.

Louie Palu RCA is a Canadian documentary photographer and filmmaker known for covering social-political issues, including war and human rights. His first major body of work was Cage Call: Life and Death in the Hard Rock Mining Belt with writer Charlie Angus, followed by working for The Globe and Mail for 6 years as a staff photographer (2001–2007). In addition...

Manly Edward MacDonald was a Canadian impressionistic painter who was born in Point Anne, close to Belleville, Ontario.

Maya Kulenovic is a Canadian artist working in painting and sculpture. She lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and exhibits internationally.

George Alexander Walker RCA is a Canadian artist and writer best known for his wood engravings and wordless novels.

Barbara Anne Astman RCA is a Canadian artist who has recruited instant camera technology, colour xerography, and digital scanners to explore her inner thoughts.

Arthur Edward Cleeve Horne, OC OOnt RCA, was a Canadian portrait painter and sculptor.

Elizabeth Winnifred Wood RCA, known as Elizabeth Wyn Wood, was a Canadian sculptor and advocate of art education. A notable figure in Canadian sculpture, she is primarily known for her modernist interpretation of the Canadian landscape in her works.

Artis Lane is a Canadian sculptor and painter. Her bronze bust of Sojourner Truth is on display in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. It was unveiled in 2009, and was the first statue in the Capitol to represent an African-American woman. Lane's sculpture of Rosa Parks was on display in the Oval Office during the...

Penelope Umbrico is an American artist best known for her work that appropriates images found using search engines and picture sharing websites.

Carlos del Junco is a Cuban-Canadian harmonica player.

Emanuel Otto Hahn RCA was a German-born Canadian sculptor and coin designer. He taught and later married Elizabeth Wyn Wood. He co-founded and was the first president of the Sculptors' Society of Canada.

Maxwell Harold Gimblett ONZM is a New Zealand and American artist. His work synthesizes postwar American and Japanese art using abstract expressionism, modernism, spiritual abstraction, and Zen calligraphy. Gimblett’s work was included in the exhibition The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1869-1989 at the Guggenheim Museum and is represented in that museum's collection as well as the collections of...

Grant Munro OC LL. D. was a Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor. In 1952, he co-starred with Jean-Paul Ladouceur in Norman McLaren's Neighbours. His film, Christmas Cracker, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965.

Monte Kwinter was a Canadian politician in Ontario. He was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1985 until 2018. He represented the ridings of Wilson Heights from 1985 to 1999, and York Centre from 1999 to 2018. Kwinter was a cabinet minister in the government of David Peterson from 1985 to 1990 and also in Dalton...

Greg Curnoe was a Canadian painter known for his role in the Canadian art movement labeled London Regionalism, which, beginning in the 1960s, made London, Ontario, an important centre for artistic production in Canada. While his oeuvre chronicled his daily experience in a variety of media, it was grounded in twentieth-century art movements, especially Dada, with its emphasis on nihilism...

Aanchal Malhotra is an Indian oral historian, author and artist, known for her work on the 1947 Partition of India. Her research and writings focus on the oral histories of individuals affected by the Partition, capturing their memories and the tangible remnants of that period.

Doris McCarthy, CM OOnt RCA LL. D. was a Canadian artist known for her abstracted landscapes. In a 2004 interview with Harold Klunder, the artist remarked:

Yank Azman is a Canadian television and film actor.

Simon Wilcox is a Canadian poet and songwriter, based in Los Angeles, California. Her songs have been recorded and released by Blink-182, Britney Spears, Carly Rae Jepsen, Enrique Iglesias, Miranda Lambert, The Used, Nick Jonas, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez, Fever 333, Royal and the Serpent, Five Seconds of Summer, Goldfinger, Demi Lovato, Charlie Puth, Steve Aoki, Rita Ora, Liam Payne,...

Charles Officer was a Canadian film and television director, writer, actor, and professional hockey player.

Rebecca Belmore RCA DFA is an interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist from Canada who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang (Lac Seul First Nation). Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Karl Schroeder is a Canadian science fiction author and futurist. His novels present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality, and interstellar travel, and are deeply philosophical. More recently he also focuses on near-future topics. Several of his short stories feature the character Gennady Malianov.

Jack Hamilton Bush OC RCA was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-painterly Abstraction. Inspired by Henri Matisse and American abstract expressionist painters such as Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, Bush encapsulated joyful yet emotional feelings in his vibrant paintings, comparing them to jazz music. Clement Greenberg...

Gregory Gallant, better known by his pen name Seth, is a Canadian cartoonist. He is best known for his series Palookaville and his mock-autobiographical graphic novel It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (1996).

Franklin Carmichael RCA was a Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven. Though he was primarily famous for his use of watercolours, he also used oil paints, charcoal and other media to capture the Ontario landscapes. Besides his work as a painter, he worked as a designer and illustrator, creating promotional brochures, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and...

Alfred Joseph Casson OC RCA was a member of the Canadian group of artists known as the Group of Seven. He joined the group in 1926 at the invitation of Franklin Carmichael, replacing Frank Johnston. Casson is best known for his depictions in his signature limited palette of southern Ontario, and for being the youngest member of the Group of...

Bruce Mau RCA is a Canadian designer and educator. He began his career a graphic designer and has since applied his design methodology to architecture, art, museums, film, eco-environmental design, education, and conceptual philosophy. Mau is the chief executive officer of Massive Change Network, a Chicago-based design consultancy he co-founded with his wife, Bisi Williams. In 2015, he became the...

Richard Edmund Williams was a Canadian and British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)—for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993).

Floria Sigismondi is an Italian-Canadian film director, screenwriter, music video director, artist, and photographer.

Michael James Aleck Snow CC RCA was a Canadian artist who worked in a range of media including film, installation, sculpture, photography, and music. His best-known films are Wavelength (1967) and La Région Centrale (1971), with the former regarded as a milestone in avant-garde cinema.

Lee Patterson was a Canadian film and television actor.

Martha Jane Ladly is a Canadian academic, designer and musician. She is a professor of design at OCAD University. Ladly also has had a long career as a musician and became famous internationally as part of rock band Martha and the Muffins. She had a solo career in the mid-1980s and then worked in design and education.

Peter Ho is an American-born Canadian singer, actor, producer and director active in East Asia. He is known for his roles in TV series Wind and Cloud, One Meter Sunshine, Goddess of Mercy, The Young Warriors, Three Kingdoms, King's War, Summer's Desire, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and in films Kamen Rider 555: Paradise Lost and Sword Master.

Olivia Chow is a Canadian politician who has been the 66th and current mayor of Toronto since July 12, 2023. Previously, Chow served as the New Democratic Party (NDP) member of Parliament (MP) for Trinity—Spadina from 2006 to 2014, and was a councillor on the Metro Toronto Council from 1992 to the 1998 amalgamation followed by Toronto City Council until...

Aimee Chan Yan-mei is a Canadian born actress based in Hong Kong. She was the winner of Miss Hong Kong 2006.

Frederick Reginald Ironside, known professionally as Michael Ironside, is a Canadian actor. A prominent character actor with over 270 film and television credits, he is known for playing villains and antiheroes, but has also portrayed sympathetic characters. He is best known for his roles in action and science fiction films, and had his breakthrough performance in the 1981 David Cronenberg...

Clark Johnson is an American-Canadian actor and director, who has worked in both television and film. He is best known for his roles as David Jefferson on Night Heat (1985–88), Clark Roberts on E.N.G. (1989–94), Meldrick Lewis in Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99) and Augustus Haynes in The Wire (2008).

Jumana Emil Abboud is a Palestinian artist living and working in Jerusalem.