Richard Yates was born in Edmonton, Canada, in 1949, grew up in Victoria B.C., attending the University of Victoria to earn a BFA. He then attended the Instituto Allende in Mexico, the Banff Centre and Manchester Polytechnic in England. Returning to Canada, he earned an MFA in Printmaking at the world renowned Printmaking program at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1984.​After the degree, a stint at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm followed and he returned to Edmonton to live and work for fifteen years. A move to rural Manitoba followed, where he lived and worked for years.Yates has participated in over 130 group exhibitions and 27 solo exhibitions in Canada and abroad, showing woodcut prints, etchings, engravings, silkscreen prints, linocuts, drawings, paintings and installations. He has also produced handmade books on his own presses. His work is in all major public collections: Canada Council Art Bank, Alberta Art Foundation, and the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. The Art Gallery of Alberta is home to a large collection of his prints. Modern Painters Gallery/Great Bear presented his work several times in the last twenty years.Richard Yates has been a very unique visionary artist, working from his experience, his surroundings, his mythic imagination and his mystic wonder. Of all the artists working in western Canada that one can think of, Yates is the one who comes closest to resembling William Blake, the historical English giant.