After Wordsworth

About After Wordsworth

This colourful abstract painting is by Canadian artist Milly Ristvedt.

For more than sixty years, Milly Ristvedt’s artwork has been grounded in an exploration of colour and expressive form as a powerful way to convey emotion –to tell a story. Ristvedt has attained an international reputation as a masterful artist known for her colour field paintings. In this lyrical piece, one of her earlier paintings, brushstrokes in teal blue, deep pink, cranberry, and turquoise dance across the canvas. Fine gestural lines in orange, and yellow float against the white backdrop adding dynamic movement throughout the painting.

“The influence of abstract expressionism, colour field and minimalism is evident in the earliest paintings. This gave way in the mid-seventies to an intuitive, spontaneous, and visceral way of working that more directly engaged with my life in the world – relationship to the land, the forces of nature, and a broader and deeper expression of thought and emotion. In the eighties, these works gradually shifted into more cerebral and minimalist explorations of colour and gestural form.” Milly Ristvedt

“The grids that contain her colour feel less like straightjackets and more like the elegant discipline of a haiku poem or a villanelle. But even these comparisons fail. As Milly says, the very nature of her art is to resist words. Her work instead is an expression of intuition, a struggle to understand without conscious reasoning.” Merilyn Simonds, Canadian Author

Milly Ristvedt was born in British Columbia and studied at the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University). Her first solo exhibit was at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in Toronto.
Her work has been included in many publications, She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004 and honored with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. She has won seven Canada Council awards and two Ontario Arts Council awards and had over 50 solo exhibitions and been part of countless group shows. Ristvedt's work can be found in major public collections throughout North America including the National Gallery of Canada.

Milly Ristvedt is represented exclusively by the Oeno Gallery.