Stephen Cruise was born in 1949 in Montreal. He studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto from 1967 to 1970. He co-founded and directed the A Space gallery in Toronto from 1970 to 1974, from 1976 to 1980 he lived in South Korea and Japan where he studied kendo and iaido. He has shown in many group exhibitions including Trajectoire 73 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then in Paris. In 1973 he had work in the Chair Show and Videoscope both at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. He showed work in 1980 in the National Gallery of Canada exhibition, Pluralities, and in 1983 in the Kuenstler aus Kanada exhibition in Stuttgart. He has had a number of solo exhibitions since 1973 at A Space in Toronto, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, The Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax, The Vancouver Art Gallery and the Muramatsu Gallery of Tokyo. Cruise is represented by The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto where he had two major exhibitions in 1982 and one in 1983.