Ristvedt, Milly

Person

Ristvedt, Milly

• Ristvedt-Handerek, Milly

1942-

Milly Ristvedt (b. 1942, Kimberley, BC) MA, RCA, began her career in Toronto in 1964 after studies with Takao Tanabe and Roy Kiyooka at the Vancouver School of Art.
At 24, her work was included in the Centennial Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario and featured at the National Gallery of Canada. She was chosen for exhibitions in Winnipeg, Paris and Lausanne. By 1969, Ristvedt was painting large canvases, sharing a studio with Jack Bush and showing with the Carmen Lamanna Gallery. Since 1968 Ristvedt has had more than fifty solo exhibitions, including a travelling ten-year survey exhibition in 1979 organized by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. She has been featured in multiple publications including Abstract Painting in Canada (Nasgaard, 2007).

Ristvedt has been continually involved in artists' organizations throughout her career. She co-founded and headed up the first Canadian artist-run centre, Vehicule Art, in Montreal in the 1970s. As an advocate for artist's rights, Ristvedt was awarded the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 for her work with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She has served on many arts boards and committees, including those of Modern Fuel, the National Arts Service Organization and the Visual Arts Alliance.

Ristvedt has taught classes and studio courses and workshops throughout her career. In the 1990s, she organized the Sheffield Lake Workshop, an annual one-week retreat attended by more than 40 professional Canadian and American women.

Ristvedt's abstract, acrylic canvases are held in private, corporate and public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Harvard University. And most recently The National Gallery of Canada. She completed an MA in Art History at Queen's University in 2011.

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