Increments

About Increments

A monumental work, comprised of 66 small square panels, each painted with a single orthogonal, are installed in a precise grid: six high and ten across. The orthogonal panels are painted in solid, specific colors with the area of each increasing incrementally, progressively influencing the next, from top-down and left to right, across the work.

"The multiple panel work, Increments, begins with the appearance of order and plays with the differences between change and progress, and order and chance. Internal forms follow two rules of change, from the upper left to the bottom right. In contrast to these rules of change, the 66 colours were randomly chosen, mostly consisting of mixes from earlier paintings. Incremental change sometimes appears as progress. Increments came about as a result of some less than optimistic musing on the task of effecting positive and meaningful (progressive) change." Milly Ristvedt, 2017

Increments is a poetic and intellectual narrative of space, light, and movement through the curated application of colour.

Milly Ristvedt (b. 1942, Kimberley, BC) RCA, began her career in Toronto in 1964 after studies with Takao Tanabe at the Vancouver School of Art. At 24, her work was included in the Centennial Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario and featured at the National Gallery of Canada. She was chosen for prestigious exhibitions in Winnipeg, Paris and Lausanne. By 1969, Ristvedt was sharing a studio with Jack Bush and showing with the Carmen Lamanna Gallery. Over her long career, Ristvedt has had over 50 solo exhibitions. Her abstract, acrylic canvases are held in private, corporate and public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Harvard University. Barry Lord observed in Art in America (1969) that Ristvedt’s paintings were “…more insistent than Bush, more consciously structured than Molinari.” Ristvedt is represented exclusively by Oeno Gallery. A catalogue is available.