Arthur (Art) McKay was born September 11th, 1926, in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. He studied at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary (1946-48) and the Academie de La Grande Chaumiere, Paris, France (1949-1950). He was hired by Ken Lochhead as a Special Lecturer in Art with the School of Fine Arts at Regina in 1952. McKay became the workshop coordinator for the 1957 and 1959 Emma Lake Artists' Workshops given by Will Barnet and Barnett Newman, and attended the 1955 workshop with Jack Shadbolt. He also studied in New York and with the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania (1956-57).

Apart from a term as an Associate Professor of Art with the Nova Scotia College of Art (1967-68), he taught as an Associate Professor with the University of Regina until his retirement in 1987. During this time he was known as a member of the Regina Five who exhibited at the National Gallery in 1961 and who were considered to be at the forefront of the Canadian abstract art movement. His work has been shown across Canada and in the United States, where he was included in a 1964 Los Angeles exhibition organized by the New York art critic, Clement Greenberg, and entitled "Post- Painterly Abstraction". Organized to marking the new generation of "colour" painters, McKay was one of only three Canadians to be included in the show.