Artist Vivien Tytor, an accomplished painter from Ottawa's west end, recently began an almost month-long exhibit at the Visual Arts Centre Orléans Gallery exploring themes of iridescence, colour and light. Various pieces feature shimmering strands of Aurora Borealis, while others explore lilluminated reflections from soap bubbles and even petrol puddles.
"Light and reflection is a consistent theme within my body of work that includes paintings, photography and video production," said Tytor following a vernissage last Thursday, July 26.
Tytor – who paints out of the west-end collective Stafford Studios and has exhibited at galleries like the Ottawa Art Gallery, Cube Gallery and Karsh-Masson – experiments with all sorts of luminous media including shiny compact discs, iridescent paint, interference colours and capturing reflected light. "It's about light, and reflection and space, and atmosphere," she said. "I'm trying to make the invisible visible, and it's a meditative process."
Having harnessed her creative urges early in life, Tytor boasts a long and varied career as a painter, videographer and photographer. "My art started in school, in art classes," she said. "And then it became a hobby. And then I started taking it seriously."
After receiving a degree in fine arts from the University of Ottawa, she immersed herself in painting and the arts full-time, she said. Now, along with self-directed experimental art, Tytor works feverishly at commissioned art projects from a constellation of patrons.
"Sometimes someone will commission a very specific project, a photograph or a person," she said. Tytor also completed degrees from the Banff School of Fine Art and Ottawa School of Art. "That kind of piece is very systematic," she continued. "In one case, I started with a skeletal structure and laid the paint over that – I sort of built up the face, and so forth."
Tytor also produces her own short videos, which involve mixed images and other artistic effects – her online video, "The Magic Paintbrush", can be viewed at downtown Ottawa's SAW Gallery website (www.sawvideo.ca).
Vivien Tytor's "Iridescence" displays from July 26-August 17 at the Visual Arts Centre Orléans Gallery, 1490 Youville Drive, in the Orléans Recreation Complex. Hours are 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
2000-2002: Seven selected works at Britannia Gallery (Ottawa) 2002-2003: Five selected works at Red Tulip Gallery (Ottawa) 2003: Juried art exhibit at Karsh-Masson Gallery (Ottawa) 2004: Juried solo exhibition at Centrepointe Theatre (Ottawa) 2005: Five selected works at Three Galleries (Toronto) 2005: Exhibition at Tulip Festival (Ottawa) 2005: Juried exhibit at JAZZ Visual Art Exhibition (Ottawa)
