Vivian Reiss

Vivian Reiss (born 1952 in New York) 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.

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.

In October 2008, Reiss showed at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. The show was entitled El Museo del Jardin de la Humanidad (The Museum of the Garden of Humanity) – 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.

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Wikipedia