Grid Notes

About Grid Notes

This large colorful contemporary abstract painting was created by Milly Ristvedt.

For more than five decades Milly Ristvedt has contributed significantly to post-war abstract painting in Canada. Early in her career, she was singled out as a superb painter by renowned artists such as Jack Bush, a modernist celebrity. Now her work hangs in the National Gallery of Canada. In the 1990s, seduced by the creative possibilities of color and dynamic abstract form, Ristvedt explored the grid as a pattern that provides a greater sense of order. This piece is actually two canvases with raw edges that have been collaged onto a stretched canvas. The palette is ‘Milly’ inspired—an unusual and rich combination of purples, blues, golden yellow, and cranberry red accented by white and black. The painting is framed in basswood.

“The grid is a commonplace and omnipresent structure. The intersection of vertical and horizontal represents many things in human history. It is as old as this planet’s gravity and our attempts to stand erect on it. Its mystical associations are numerous. Repeated, these directional forces become the web that holds everything together.” Milly Ristvedt

“She uses color to effectuate spatial displacement. A displacement that confounds a simple straightforward reading that is suggested by the grid. Her surfaces are strongly present while at the same time contemplative. Her colors are warm and rich, humanistic. Ristvedt’s paintings are pure abstraction, formal abstraction without reference beyond the framing edge.” Bill Kort, Artreview No. 7, Nov. 1998

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. 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.

Milly Ristvedt is represented exclusively by the Oeno Gallery.