About

“Vivian makes the world joyful” is a phrase that has been repeated many times.
Vivan’s creativity takes many forms over her 50 year career as an artist:
paintings, food, architecture, gardens, music, dance, and events.

Biography

Reiss was born in New York in 1952 to recent immigrants who had just survived the holocaust in Hungary. At the age of nine, she visited the Prado Museum in Madrid. As closing time approached, her reluctance to leave became a declaration to become an artist. Reiss went on to pursue fine art studies at The School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and The Art Institute in Boston. Her work gained the support of Marilyn Powers and Jason Berger and she continued her apprenticeship under their guidance at The Direct Vision Atelier in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Reiss has traveled widely, and her wanderlust is an important element in her work. She has lived in yurts with nomadic herders in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, painted elephants in Africa, and studied dance in Bali. Reiss’ background in numerous art forms, from dance to sculpture to the culinary arts suffuses her art with multiple visions of artistry, including the art of living which she paints with wide strokes. Her collection of ethnocultural artifacts, ranging from miniature kitchens to Central Asian silk caftans, are reflected in her work and showcased in her larger-than-life home.

Her long career as an artist includes more than 50 shows, over 30 of which were one-woman shows. She is in numerous collections, including in the collections of heads of state; the Canadian Embassies in Washington and Paris; and in private and corporate collections in more than 15 countries. Reiss was invited to create work for the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, the largest international art exhibition in Japan considered the Japanese equivalent of the Venice Biennale. See Satoyama Storehouse for her portraits.

In addition to the Triennial, Reiss had a concurrent show at The Canadian Embassy in Tokyo of Reiss’ portraits of prominent Canadians in the arts. Her portraits are known for their intimacy between subject, artist, and art. A catalog of Reiss’ portraits has been published, including a wide range of subjects – portraits of friends, acquaintances, as well as portrait commissions.

Reiss’ talents go beyond the canvas. She has designed numerous architectural projects (over 60 projects in Toronto), created integrated multimedia performance events, created installations, has facilitated numerous social events and salons, and designed costumes, clothing, gardens, and furniture; and is currently working on a cookbook.

Reiss has always rejected rigid or dogmatic approaches to art. “My modus operandi does not restrict itself to a rigid field of artistic tenets. My tenet is merely ‘the art shall speak for itself. I advocate the freedom to express and interpret. I don’t believe that for something to be good, really good, it has to be arcane, or painful. That is a myth that is outdated. Joy is a vastly underrated artistic expression.”

About her paintings

 

About | Quotes about Reiss | Curriculum Vitae