Red on Yellow

About Red on Yellow

This large-scale contemporary painting by Milly Ristvedt explores colour in abstract form.

A masterful, award-winning colourist, Milly Ristvedt’s elegant abstract paintings hang on the walls amidst many prestigious collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. Highly regarded for her intuitive, almost visceral sense of colour and her lyrical expressive form, Ristvedt’s storied career was initially inspired by the radical work of abstract expressionists such as Canada’s Jack Bush and America’s Morris Louis, among others. Early in her decades-long career, Milly Ristvedt understood the transformational power of colour to convey a mood, add light and depth to a composition.
This is one of a series of large abstract paintings she created in the 1970s, an era when she trusted her own innate sense of colour to explore its true potential as a visual language. In this joyful, luminous work, calligraphic markings—lines of deep red criss-cross the horizontal canvas awash in golden yellow.
Expressive brushstrokes of turquoise, purple, deep blue, magenta, lilac and green are highlighted by a backdrop of soft yellow and patches of white.
Ristvedt uses massive canvases stretched to a painting board on the floor and thin washes of colour applied using a scrub brush. In the 1970s, her bold colour choices included these linear gestural brushstrokes--a significant shift towards painterliness.

“The influence of abstract expressionism, colour field and minimalism…gave way in the mid-seventies to an intuitive, spontaneous, and visceral way of working that more directly engaged with my life in the world.” Milly Ristvedt

“Milly Ristvedt dreams in colour….She has watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and set over the Pacific. To paraphrase the title of the famous work by Joan Miro, Milly Ristvedt is the colour of her dreams.” Eric Devlin, artist, illustrator

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 held 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 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.