Vivian Reiss


Vivian Reiss is an artist. She has been living and working in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, since 1975. She still spends time in New York City, New York, U.S. Reiss is a painter, creator of multimedia performance events and installations, designer of architectural projects, costumes, gardens and furniture; and currently working on a cook book. Reiss is the owner and creator of the Reiss Gallery, located at 500 College Street in Toronto.

Life and work

Reiss studied fine art at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the Art Institute in Boston. She apprenticed under the guidance of Marilyn Powers and Jason Berger at the Direct Vision Atelier in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Reiss is known for her large-scale oil-on-canvas works. Her art work is characterized by vibrancy of colour and expression, as well as complex compositional ideas. Reiss has had a long-term interest in still-life, portraiture and landscapes. Her subject matter ranges from her own garden, to snow monkeys in Japan, to kewpie dolls, to grazing sheep.
Her 35 plus years as a career artist includes more than 50 shows, both in Canada and around the world, over 30 of which were one-woman shows. Reiss' art work is in numerous collections, including collections of heads of state; the Canadian Embassies in Washington and Paris; and in private and corporate collections in more than 15 countries.

Career spotlight

In October 2008, Reiss showed at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. The show was entitled El Museo del Jardin de la Humanidad – the show featured portraits of immigrant Mexican farm workers who worked on Southern Ontario farms. The portraits were also shown with paintings of Reiss' farm garden in Toronto. The exhibition was with the support of the Consulate General of Mexico in Toronto, Canada.
Reiss was invited to create work for the 2006 Echigo-Tsumari Triennial; one of the largest international art exhibitions in Japan and considered the Japanese equivalent of the Venice Biennale. The art project was entitled Satoyama Storehouse and featured the portraits of the inhabitants of Hachi, a small rice farming village in the mountains of Japan. Reiss lived in the village for three months as part of the artist residency and during the Triennial Reiss' work was exhibited in the village's abandoned school house and viewed by more than 300,000 people. In addition to the Triennial, Reiss had a concurrent show at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo of her portraits of prominent Canadians in the arts.
A catalogue of Reiss' portraits has been published showcasing a wide range of subjects.
See portraits section below for more details.

The Reiss Gallery

The Reiss Gallery is located at 500 College Street, in Toronto's Little Italy quarter, and was designed by Reiss herself. The design of the gallery is unique, with the exterior of the building displaying larger-than-life wooden monkeys and a 20-foot Plexiglas 'paint palette' window design along with an oversized wooden paint brush. The gallery's interior is covered in cut ceramic plates with tiled portals flanked by curved walls and moldings – an architectural work of art where everything seems to be folding in on itself.

Portraits

Reiss has painted many notable artists, performers, public personalities and philanthropists, including:
Quote from Deirdre Kelly, Curating at Home, Globe and Mail July 6, 2007. "Artists paint, sculpt or otherwise create things that people often collect. But in the case of Toronto-based painter Vivian Reiss, collecting is as much of a passion as invigorating a blank canvas with her trademark bursts of colour."
Quote from Rita Zekas, Reiss Up To Some Monkey Business, Toronto Star December 15, 2007.
Quote in conjunction to Reiss' work in Hachi, Japan and her Satoyama Story portrait project. Reiss is quoted within this quote.
"She found the generous spirit of her subjects amazing, considering the perception that the Japanese are a people who hide their emotions, 'During the process of painting them, they opened up. Every day, there were offerings of food and flowers. I felt humbled; the people were so warm and generous.'"

Awards and residences

Reiss has been the subject, a quoted expert and notable source for many print and broadcast publications for many years of her art career.

Print media coverage