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Canadian artist Viviane Case-Fox was born in Hungary in 1950. To improve her technique, she studied at the Ottawa School of Art, at the Saïdye Bronfman Centre in Montreal and at the Center of Visual Arts in Westmount. The acrylic paintings and oil paintings of Viviane Case-Fox bring visual pleasure leaning towards abstraction. The colour, brightness of Viviane Case-Fox’s paintings often transport us into a world of exuberant contrast, emotion and sensitivity.
“Viviane Case-Fox is best known for her works dealing, very freely and often at the limit of figuration, with the floral bouquet. Which she declines, moreover, with an undeniable plastic quality and not withstanding emotion. We may know less her landscapes. Very suggestive, even discreet, ethereal in a recognizable form. Her very personal approach of the world plunges the spectator into a universe modulated between physical reality and dream, sometimes energetic, sometimes peaceful…” Robert Bernier
A Quebec artist painter, we find works of art of Viviane Case-Fox in numerous private and public collections. They are available in galleries in both the United States (New York and Fort Lauderdale) and in Canada (Montreal and Toronto).
There is today a wide variety of styles and languages in painting that resonate in a broad spectrum of motivations among art lovers. Not everyone is interested in painting in the same way or looking for the same thing. In this wide range of aesthetic and plastic interests that sometimes diverge, artists and amateurs alike remain attached to the pictorial tradition, and this, not for the folkloric dimension, but for this very particular feeling, this sudden and intense joy that transports us when a well-executed painting, brushed with passion and nuance, exalts this subtle modulation of shapes, colors and textures which seduces and intrigues the eye, then the whole body. The fans of painting all have a classical side, and it is with pleasure, even enthusiasm, that they drink from a painting executed with know-how and mastery. The style does not matter and, strictly speaking, the thematic and the subject either, at least at first analysis.
This visual pleasure, the painting of Viviane Fox provides it. Her approach reflects both her immense respect for the pictorial act and her equally powerful desire to elevate her subject, to pull him out of his apparent banality to lead him into a buffer universe located on the borders of physical reality and the world of emotion. The visible and the invisible rub together in his works in the same way that tradition is associated with mystery. In fact, her painting has no age. It is neither modern nor old, yet without suffering from senility or giving rise to a feeling of déjà vu. The artist does not seek to renew the practice of painting; rather, she applies herself to rendering, in her own way, all the pictorial power with as much skill and sensitivity as possible. She seeks to translate her own pleasure in painting, and she does so with a full commitment, with her whole person. We find in her painting the impulses of the greatest painters, and her only fault is perhaps not to seek complexity, that of the subject or the way of approaching it. Of course, the simplicity of her approach can also be of interest, because we must admit that the artist is doing quite well. Very well even. And the reason is simple. Everything is based on the quality of her touch, which allows her to paint a picture with aggressiveness and restraint, violence and calm. I read, I do not remember where, that Viviane Case-Fox admired the work of Joan Mitchell. I saw in her paintings the same vitality of the gesture conveyed by a mixture of despair and joy. This feeling which gives certain artists this salutary vertigo, this constant fear of losing the painting. Painting is like diving and learning to swim each time; at least that’s what Édouard Manet said. And what I love most about Viviane Fox’s work is the quality of her fights, the incredible energy that emerges from them.
Source : Robert Bernier, La peinture au Québec depuis les années 1960, Les Éditions de l’Homme, 2002, Case-Fox Viviane Case-Fox (1950), pages 364-365.
