PRIVATE COLLECTION: Canadian Art from Private Collections - A Selection of the Director’s Choice
Viewing Dates in the Glass Room:
Sept. 20 - 28 and Oct. 18 - 26, 2026
Private Collection presents a carefully curated selection of Canadian art drawn from private collections and offered for acquisition through Armstrong Fine Art Consulting. Bringing together historical works, landscapes, and works by notable Canadian artists, the exhibition offers collectors an opportunity to encounter works that have been thoughtfully lived with, collected, and preserved before entering the market once again.
This is not simply a sale of previously owned artwork. Each work has been selected through the Directors’ perspective, with consideration given to artistic significance, quality, provenance, and its place within the broader story of Canadian art. Together, the works reveal the diversity of Canadian artistic practice while offering a glimpse into the tastes and histories of the collectors who have cared for them.
Private Collections celebrates the continuing life of art—works moving from one collection to another, carrying with them histories while making room for new ones.
The exhibition will be presented in the Glass Room at Atelier Ironwood from October 20–28, with a second pop-up presentation from October 18–26. The exhibition is a Directors’ Choice, offering a personal selection of works chosen by Armstrong Fine Art Consulting from its network of private collections.
Private Collection is an invitation to look again, discover something unexpected, and perhaps find a work ready to begin its next chapter.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Few artists altered the trajectory of Canadian art as decisively as William Ronald. As the founding catalyst behind Painters Eleven, Ronald helped dismantle the dominance of landscape tradition in postwar Canada and introduced abstraction as a serious and internationally relevant force within Canadian culture. His contribution was not simply stylistic—it was structural. Ronald created new possibilities for what Canadian art could be and, in doing so, established himself as one of the most important architects of modern Canadian art history.
Rick Bond is an established Western Canadian painter known for his vibrant landscapes, streetscapes and figurative compositions. Working primarily in acrylic on canvas, Bond combines bold colour, energetic brushwork and simplified geometric forms to create paintings that sit between Contemporary Impressionism and semi-abstraction.
Professionally known as R. York Wilson or simply York Wilson—was one of Canada’s most significant 20th-century painters and muralists. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Wilson moved fluidly from commercial illustration and social-realist satire to lyrical abstraction and monumental architectural murals.
Floyd Elzinga is an acclaimed Canadian sculptor widely recognized for his monumental steel and bronze works that transform the raw drama of the natural world into powerful contemporary form. Based on the Niagara Escarpment, Elzinga draws inspiration from the rugged terrain around him—using eroded stumps, fractured branches, invasive species, and ravaged trees as the primary language of his practice.
Ronald Boaks is a seminal figure in Canadian contemporary abstraction, whose multidisciplinary practice has remained vital, exploratory, and deeply relevant for over five decades. Emerging in the mid-1970s, Boaks belongs to a generation of artists who expanded the language of abstraction beyond strict formalism, infusing it with emotion, intuition, and philosophical inquiry.
