Georgia Suite: Tableau

About Georgia Suite: Tableau

This contemporary colourful abstract painting was created by Milly Ristvedt.

The ‘fugitive properties of colour’ as Milly Ristvedt likes to refer to them have provided her with life-long inspiration. Celebrated by critics and collectors alike, the Canadian artist has attained notoriety in North America as a superb colourist and masterful abstract artist. In this vivid abstract Ristvedt focused on minimal shape and the “character and skeleton” of lyrical gestures--brushstrokes in saturated colour that dance across the width of the horizontal canvas.
The palette is fresh and modern—turquoise, melon, orange, deep blue, white, yellow and black play against a colour field of soft neutrals framed by a wash of green.

“The rhythm and flow of my paintings are the rhythm and flow of my life. The necessity is to show what I have seen, felt, understood and intuited. The latter is my grace. It’s my connection with all that is much larger than myself.”
Milly Ristvedt

“Milly Ristvedt dreams in colour….She has watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and set over the Pacific. To paraphrase the title of the famous work by Joan Miro, Milly Ristvedt is the colour of her dreams.” Eric Devlin, artist, illustrator

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. 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 Olitski 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. Ristvedt's work can be found in major public collections throughout North America including the National Gallery of Canada.