About Vivianne

Vivianne LaRiviere has been an artist for as long as she can remember. Her earliest recollections date back to pre-kindergarten years, as she still has some black and white photos of herself and a close cousin sitting side by side at a piano ~ pretending to play a duet. As the story goes ~  there was even some  murmurings from the crib.

 

That could be one of the reasons there is a grand piano at her gallery ~ The River Gallery on Water Street at 49 Water Street, in Pictou, Nova Scotia. Vivianne describes herself as an improv player. Though having years of Royal Conservatory training, she opted out of the classics in her early 30’s, choosing to dedicate her hours of practice to simply being with the instrument. To improv, to allow the discovery of sounds, and effects, and ambiguous rhythms drift up as if like smoke moving lullingly upward on a hot summer night, drifting up from an eternal singing bonfire. Vivianne is also a songwriter with releases that did garner some radio and record label attention. She feels as if sound and imagery are part of what infinity is all about. She clings to the extraordinary radiance and magic of sound. And she is hearing impaired.

 

These notions also appear in the way Vivianne paints. The gallery’s walls awash with “mad, wild, bold art…” Though the gallery, which has been opened since June 2022, supports and showcases many local artists and artisans, all of the paintings are Vivianne’s. Her spectrum of motion vary with what she sometimes describes as the range of ‘characters’ she paints as ‘mood personified.’ Where at times, abstract and impressionism meet, some have noted. Other meanderings are just that; bright, conceptual landscapes, whimsical folly and messy adventures with paint, and more paint. And stories, and more stories. 

 

Vivianne explores; her style not easily determined.  There is space for ambiguity to frolic in the acrylic playground; a place where the sometimes biographical nature of her painting is demonstrated symbolically. Other times she depends on concepts  as they relate both to the personal and collective unconscious, and where they intersect with the mundane of everyday life. It has proven to be a method that stimulates self-awareness through interpretation, reflection and contemplation, alongside personal symbolic revelations. 

 

Vivianne is often seen carrying a camera or two as she travels along the country roads of Nova Scotia’s North Shore ~ the place she now calls home. Intrigued by the cascading beauty of the landscape never fails to astonish her, consistently inspiring her colour choice of palette. She makes greeting cards as a way of offering glimpses and moments of these rugged coastal lands. And these too are available at The River Gallery on Water Street.

 

Vivianne writes; her meandering and sometimes poetic rhythmic style providing a balance to the chaotic nature of her artistic approach. All are ‘interlocked’ she admits - using the discipline required of one art form to inspire and inform another. “Music brings imagery to the surface, painting helps me sort out my inner world, and how I am called to be in the outer world, my camera eases the worry lines as I am accompanied by the beauty of nature in discreet, solicitous places ~ offering the Divine elements of beauty and solitude’s companionship -  and words help me unfold into what I need to see and hear, and do. It’s a matrix of disciplines. It is what makes my life as an artist so challenging, and yet so rewarding. My life as a multi-disciplined artist is also my spiritual practice. It places me in the  charismatic centre of the silence and stillness of my living ~ where I can listen to the call: ‘Who Am I called to Become?” 

 

With an education in theology and the arts, Vivianne also works as a Spiritual Arts Practitioner ~ focusing her work with people who are grieving, using conversation, meditation, and art as avenues that can bring us to places of transformation. This information can be found under the Art of Soul Care banner. 

 

 

The River Gallery on Water Street is located at 49 Water Street, Pictou NS B0K 1H0