Winter Cover

About Winter Cover

This contemporary abstract colourful painting is by Milly Ristvedt.

Celebrated nationwide as a masterful colourist and gifted abstract artist, Milly Ristvedt’s artistic journey has been dedicated to an exploration of the power of colour. In the 1990s, she continued to express herself using spontaneous lyrical brush strokes that played against washes of pure colour. In this piece, white, black, sky blue, plum and yellow strokes float across the canvas adding visual energy. The backdrop is a wash of contrasting soft browns, olive green and magenta painted on raw white canvas.

“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.” Milly Ristvedt

“Ristvedt’s history, replete with accomplishments and honours, still fails to prepare a viewer for the inventiveness, technical brilliance and dynamism of her canvases. The three works now part of the national collection show something of this uncommon degree of achievement.” Adam Welch, Associate Curator, Modern Art, AGO

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.