Vivienne Shark LeWitt
Woman with Peanut, 1994

During the middle of the 1990s I went through a happy phase of painting watercolours with a Zen- like imperfection. This image of a young woman sitting at a bar tossing up an olive to catch in her mouth is the very first of them. A major influence for me at that time was the graphic art of the mid 20th century – everything from cartoons to packaging. The out of register casualness I had always admired in Warhol, particularly his early commercial work, became a catch-all method to create many images on all sorts of subjects over the next five years or so. Working on paper is quick and expendable. The process was a little like keeping a writer’s notebook of impressions, ideas and observations. In the end I made more than I could keep track of and eventually returned to the slower pace of painting on linen. But I’ve kept the preference for sparse means ever since.

Vivienne Shark LeWitt, 20 August 2020

Biography:

Vivienne Shark LeWitt is an artist who utilises wit and subversive humour to explore the complicated and often comical nature of the human condition. Her works often depict banal everyday activities, such as individuals examining receipts, walking their dog or getting a haircut, but with a humorous twist where, for example, the title of the painting posits what the dog may be thinking during this afternoon walk. This humour is often used as a social critique, with many of Shark LeWitt’s paintings exploring ideas of animal rights and power dynamics between men and women. The first substantial display of Shark LeWitt’s twenty-eight year career took place at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne in 2008. Vivienne Shark LeWitt is represented by the Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.