Paintings

The fullness of Vivian Reiss’ life is reflected
in the vibrancy of her paintings

The fullness of Vivian Reiss’ life is reflected in the vibrancy of her paintings. Her work is large scale, luminously colorful, and endowed with a vibrant sense of joie-de-vivre. The vitality of her life is channeled in her vivid portraits, still-lifes, and landscapes. Reiss’ work is a passionate exploration of form and color, thriving off the interplay and tension between both.

Her large-scale oil-on-canvas works, developed over a 50-year career, reflect deep aesthetic concerns, as well as sophistication in the expression of the joyous and the beautiful. Her compositions brim with movement, thriving off the tension between a sense of perspective and flatness; and multiple compositional concepts thematically replayed in numerous guises throughout the canvas. Her works concentrate not on technique but on expression. Form and perspective are expressed by color which is both intense and employed with an intensively detailed eye towards hue and the mixing of multiple shades. The impression is of movement expressed on the static surface of the canvas, as compositional dialogues within the paintings are always in flux. Reiss’ work has been put in context with Alice Neel, Florine Stettheimer, David Hockney, and Matisse and she lists influences as varied as Pop Art, Dutch & Flemish paintings from the Renaissance, Expressionism, The Spanish School, and Persian miniatures as her influences. Reiss also has the energy of the abstract expressionists, reflecting the influences of her New York youth.

Reiss’ work is known for its vibrancy and the intriguing interplay between her sense of joy and her deep understanding of elemental aesthetic concerns, played out with psychological depth and passion for the creation of the sublime. Reiss’ series of Kewpie dolls exemplifies the artist’s long-term interest in still-lives, which provide a platform for understanding the complexity of her compositional ideas. Each of her Kewpie Series works embodies a separate compositional concept, reflecting the way that color and form interact in a constantly changing myriad of relationships within the painting. Reiss has completed several series of work, including the Henhouse Series, a series of paintings of snow monkeys from Japan, and a monumental series of garden triptychs.

The V Reiss Gallery in downtown Toronto was founded as a multifaceted exhibition space for Reiss artistic projects and collaborations. A unique inspirational space, the V. Reiss Gallery was designed by Reiss herself. It is meant to be a personal showcase for her work and therefore is a unique encompassing aesthetic experience.

It was one of the only opportunities in Canada to view a body of work in an environment designed by the artist themselves, offering an intimate viewpoint and environment for understanding one artist’s vision of the world and of art.

Reiss’ design for the gallery is intriguing. The exterior of the building is clad in carved wooden monkeys, and on the West end of the façade, Reiss has superimposed an enormous, 20-foot stained Plexiglas palette along with an oversized wooden paintbrush onto the exterior of the building, creating an undulating window on the inside of the gallery. The interior is equally remarkable, covered in cut ceramic plates with tiled portals flanked by curved walls, curved baseboards, and curved moldings – an architectural work of art where everything seems to be folding in on itself; molding into Reiss’ own sense of geometry; and flowing into her artwork in both abstract and figurative ways.

Commissions

Do you have a dream of what Reiss could create for you? Portrait, Still life, or an entire environment? Contact the artist for more information, commissions, or for viewing of more large scale oil on canvas works.

Learn more about Vivian, past exhibits, and see her press page.