vikki reed.com art

Growing up in the Desert Southwest cultivated a deep love of the light, the beauty and the resilience of this land.  My first body of work includes vibrant watercolors of desert landscape and botanicals. 

 I studied in the 1980s with watercolor greats Irving Shapiro and Paul Kuo, and began exhibiting at the outdoor shows in Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico after Paul's encouragement. This led to gallery representation with the Wickenburg Gallery and Work of Artist's Gallery. I also exhibited at the Celebration of  Fine Art for eight years. Before taking sabbatical to act as caregiver for my father in 2010, I was featured in a one woman show at the Northern Trust Bank in January 2008 and was selected to create an ornament for the White House Christmas Tree that same year.

In 2004 I returned to creating  mandalas which were so natural when I was a child and the   innate knowledge that mandalas are a primordial tool for centering and healing was resurrected. 

In 2016, a new medium (acrylic) and new style emerged, as I surrender more to creating "what wants to be seen", and negotiating with what is emerging as each painting develops, relying on frequency and vibration to guide the color and form.

Light play and color have always fascinated me and gotten my best attention.  Initially I painted nature, landscapes, still lifes, all for the purpose of bringing beauty and joy to life for myself and all viewers.

I knew I wanted to create art that contributed to well being, that is a constant.  The mandalas were (are) such an inspiring journey, filled with frequency, vibration and form, living ambassadors of positive change.  Personal growth inspires me, the new horizons, the unacknowledged infiniteness that we are, this is what I am exploring now.

2018 brought a fascination with painting women...empowered, beautiful  women.  I rediscovered a book already in my home on pre Raphaelite art.   Studying further, down the rabbit hole one evening, if you will, I  found that Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who is credited with founding the pre  Raphaelite movement, had written a short story about an artist who,  after suffering much disillusionment, discovered that his soul appeared  to him as a beautiful woman.  He learned then that the only true task  for an artist is to paint as a soul, for the soul, and “doest all work  from thine own heart simply”.

With that in mind, I am now bringing this philosophy to my teaching (online for now) and offering Paint By Heart instruction!  

If you want to stay up to date on all new offerings, click the Subscribe button at the top of the page and join the Paint By Heart E-mail Community

Learning watercolor as a child, it was my medium of choice from the beginning (the eighties!) until fall of 2016 when I began learning acrylics from my mentor, contemporary artist Kathy Taylor. Now I use a variety of mediums, primarily acrylic paint, but also charcoal, oil pastels, collage and alcohol inks.

To that I add a combination of collage, both papers that I have made and those I have collected.  Creating collage papers has become somewhat of an obsession since I discovered gelli plate printing!

I am attracted to intense, vibrant color and pattern. The subject matter I choose varies, but the goal is always the same, find a combination of color and form that I can feel kinesthetically, that feels nourishing and satisfying. Some of the work is available as fine art reproductions

My goal is that my collectors find continued appreciation, beauty and joy in the pieces they own, and that the pieces themselves hold space for life enhancement and consciousness expansion.

Whatever you choose to surround yourself with, in your home or workplace, may it please your senses, nourish, comfort, satisfy and inspire you!