Colleen Anderson-Millard

Colleen Anderson-Millard was born in Cardston, Alberta in 1935, and developed an early interest in art, which became a life-long obsession. At the age of twelve, she won a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts, returning there for two additional summer sessions. She received a Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Alberta, completing a four year term in 1957, where she studied painting under noted Alberta artist H.G. Glyde. She received a Bachelor of Education from the University of Calgary in 1970, an Early Childhood Services Diploma from that institution in 1975 and in 1979 a Masters of Arts. She continued her visual art education with sessions at the Art Students League in New York, the Emma Lake Artists Workshop in Emma Lake Saskatchewan and at the Leighton Artist Colony, Banff Centre. She had an active career as an art educator, beginning with a part-time position at the Allied Arts Centre in Calgary, summer session teaching stints at the Banff Centre and a year with the Calgary Public School Board where she taught Junior High level students in art and language arts. She later went on to teach non-credit courses at Mount Royal College, and the Alberta College of Art. She also worked as an instructor of non-credit courses and as a Sessional Instructor at the University of Calgary. She was an active member of the Alberta Society of Artists and also belonged to several other arts organizations, including the Print and Drawing Council of Canada, the Burns Visual Arts Society, the Alberta Museums Association, and the Muttart Art Gallery Board of Directors.

Colleen Anderson-Millard had a rich and varied career as an artist, having been included in over fifty group and solo exhibitions. Her art is represented in many public and private collections, including those of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The University of Alberta, the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie as well as the Esso and the Husky Oil Collections, both in Calgary. Her artworks have tended to express an element of spirituality, present in her earlier landscapes but becoming more pronounced in a series of mandala-themed paintings that she began creating in 1992 after being diagnosed with cancer.