What We Need

About What We Need

Abstract artist Milly Ristvedt uses colour as a language to express her thoughts and emotions. When the master colourist created this painting, she was reminded of tumultuous world events including concerns around climate change. The title refers to those thoughts. Clean, vertical ‘bands’ in bright orange, yellow, lime green, and black appear to express hope. A single, narrow horizontal line of royal blue draws the eye and adds a dynamic element to the composition. Art Critic Barry Lord (Art in America) declared that Ristvedt’s paintings were ‘more insistent than Bush, more consciously structured than Molinari.’

“The thing about abstract art is that it is not divorced from life but arises out of it.”
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.

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

She is represented exclusively by the Oeno Gallery.