TRANSFORMATIONS: The Paintings of Vivi Harder

An interview with Vivi Harder on her new work titled “Ocean Series”.

By Tom Hardy – Writer

January 30th, 2025

Your current paintings under the title Ocean Series are dramatically different from your work of previous years in which the aesthetic concerns were presented using the structures of the rectangle and the square, with subtle overlapping and subdued colours. The current work has greatly moved from these boundaries. Can you speak about this transformation?

Yes. I think that the reason I initially did the grid paintings was to distill my vision down to the material itself. I distilled everything: the paint, the colour, the texture, and by using a grid it was a way for me to explore this vision without distracting myself with a specific subject matter. I was able to really focus on my palate, on composition and on the material of the paint to find some sort of meaning within those parameters. And I did this. I found answers which were vital to the work I am doing today. I feel like now I am able to let go of the parameters of the grid and just explore the beauty of colour, texture, paint, surface and composition more freely. By creating and exploring through the early structures I imposed on myself I am now able to, in a sense, liberate myself you could say, or become more of who I personally am as an artist.

And when I observe the water and the ocean, I feel an incredible sense of freedom and an incredible power and confidence in that freedom. I enjoy playing with the whole mythology of water, the randomness of water and the patterns and light in water. This has been the inspiration or energy behind my recent paintings.

The previous paintings sought to establish a contemplative space, a space of stillness. The Ocean paintings in contrast are vibrant shapes, marks and patches of buoyant colour. How has the theme of contemplation been transformed to reflect this development? There is movement now; before there was stillness. And how has the relationship to the viewer changed?

In terms of my relationship to the viewer, well, I want to share joy really, the joy of art, the beauty of art. I want to share light and colour with the viewer and I hope to encourage the immersive experience of looking at art and make it a more visceral experience in an active and engaging way.

I also perceive a change in the nature of your belief in the act of painting itself. Before, I could see a need for precision, the mapping of rectangles and squares had something very acute about it. Not here! These new works throw themselves freely and boundlessly and I think explore further afield for this. Does this observation strike a chord with you?

It’s interesting you would say that about the early works because yes, I was going deep into my psyche, which is in a way a place full of the unknown, but I was very of sure why I was doing that, why I needed to and what were the tools I needed to do so, and the grid was a vital tool for that. Ironically, it was emancipating.

I also think, you know, your life influences your work all the time, and at that time, I was needing to pull a lot of things together in my life; a lot of powerful energies were going on around me that I had to figure out. So the artwork gave me an opportunity to find quiet and peace while all of that was going on outside of the studio.

But regarding my recent work, yes, absolutely! I’m not as focused on the outcome as I was then. I am feeling liberated in a way. I feel like I am allowing myself to become more emotional rather than seeking to emote through discipline. Here, I am seeking a visual language through spontaneity and glee. Almost the complete opposite of my early works.

And so I’m feeling much less cerebral about my work and more physical about the work. So in turn, they are almost being created on their own, by themselves, and I feel like a facilitator for a sort of aesthetic energy and artistic soul that is inside of me and yet connected with everything as well. I think the ocean is that way naturally. That is what I’m tapping into right now.

I find it fascinating that whatever I create now draws that out of me, and it’s really not a specific choice. I am allowing my instincts, my intuition, and my innate aesthetic sense to just express itself. There are moments where I’ll look at a painting and go, oh my gosh, it looks like, you know, a bunch of ice cream, and do I care about a painting that looks like a bunch of ice cream? And I am realizing that I don’t actually care; I’m allowing myself to be the instinctive artist that I am, whilst at the same time being connected with the nature around me and all of my surroundings.

The Ocean series have a rapidity about them and play off the surface motion of water, of colour and light moving on water. How do the random movements of colour, of paint, relate to the movements in water?

Oh, it’s that sense of infinity that I really love and am very interested and fascinated by. This lack of a beginning or an end. The non-linear quality of patterns and especially how the light hits the surface and never looks the same. I have a particular fondness for the fluidity of water and how it seems to emanate the message that everything exists everywhere all of the time. I think it’s so similar to painting, to art and it helps me to express my own consciousness.

Can you speak about that figurative dance that’s happening between colour and water?

The palate that I’m working in at the moment is, again, kind of random in the sense that I’m not being very decisive about it. I just feel the need to use very light, bright and vibrant colours. I see the ocean almost like an aesthetic stage in a sense. It is vast and mysterious and unknowing. In this way, it is like you’re subconscious — open to interpretation. That is something I hope to achieve in my painting: an openness where the viewer can immerse themselves freely into the visual experience of the painting.

As a matter of interest who were some of the earliest painters whose work influenced you? Do they still influence you.

Well, it’s surprising which artists are inspiring me today! For example, I have a totally renewed appreciation for Helen Frankenthaler, who I was never really sure about when I was younger. Now I understand her more fully and can see her work as really very powerful with a rich sense of emotional colour, it’s very confident. I can see what she was exploring. Ellsworth Kelly has been a favourite of mine forever and is such a master — a real mentor for me. I have always been inspired by Joan Mitchel, and more recently Joan Snyder as well, whose paintings are just fascinating — so varied and fearless again. Georgio Morandi was a big influence on my grid paintings. His ability to create so much emotion from simplicity deeply resonated with me at that time. Recently, I started to enjoy Imi Knoebel’s work as well. Not just because of his works’ beauty but also because he never repeats himself and freely creates from a place of whatever is of interest to him at that time. He’s almost a kind of an activist in that sense, and I love his entirely unencumbered approach. Very inspiring!