Colour Form 27

About Colour Form 27

In bold colours and striking form, Milly Ristvedt created a stunning series of colour field paintings. The master colourist chose to alternate bands of bright blue and watermelon pink for this piece. Each row is slightly curved as it leads the viewer’s eye into infinity. Ristvedt counts famed modernists Morris Louis from the Washington Color School and Canada’s Jack Bush among her early influences. But the young artist was also genuinely inspired by the world around her.

“(A fellow artist) Gerald had made necklaces out of dyed fava beans which were hung to dry, creating a lovely series of loops across the wall. The structure used in the Colour Field paintings was influenced as much by seeing these loops as by the geometric and architectural shapes of minimalist sculpture and painting seen in New York a year earlier." Milly Ristvedt

Born in British Columbia, Ristvedt studied at the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University) and had her first solo exhibit at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in Toronto. In the late 1960s, Ristvedt shared a studio with famed Canadian painter Jack Bush, met art critic Clement Greenberg and was inspired by American painters Jules Olitiski and Frank Stella. Her work has been included in many publications. She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004 and honoured 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.

Milly Ristvedt is represented exclusively by Oeno Gallery.