P.E.I. Red

About P.E.I. Red

This abstract contemporary painting by Milly Ristvedt is all about colour.

Several paintings of this masterful abstract artist now hang in the National Gallery. The bold vision and dynamic oeuvre of Canada’s Milly Ristvedt have long been prized by collectors and applauded by critics. Using vivid colours and striking, simple abstract form, Ristvedt created a stunning series of colour field paintings. She counts famed modernists Morris Louis from the Washington Colour School and Canada’s Jack Bush among her early influences. During the 1970s, Ristvedt lived in Montreal, where her experimentation and exploration of colour continued. She already intuitively knew that colour had the power to evoke emotion and was on a path to create her own distinctive visual language. This is one of a series of paintings she created that displayed her superb use of colour and simple form. The deep red colour field painted in layers on the raw canvas features several strokes of colour, in a range of blues and purple, outlined in white, descending from the top of the frame.

“My paintings are, and always have been, attempts not only to focus awareness of colour, but to put colour to use in making cohesive statements that go beyond the visual. The simile between music and painting has been made a countless number of times, particularly by and about artists who use the range of colour as a ‘voice’, the way a composer uses the range of sound to express feelings and ideas. ‘Tonality’ is common to both.” Milly Ristvedt

“The earliest of Ristvedt’s pictures, dating from the early 70s, are already characterized by a fascination with colour which has continued to the present. These paintings demonstrate Ristvedt’s efforts to find simplified formats which allow colour to operate freely. Following examples of the artists she admires, she built her early pictures out of brilliant saturated colour, spread across the continuous expanse of the flat canvas.” Karen Wilkin, Curator and Art Critic

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 has 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.