Feminine Shapes

Feminine Shapes is a large-format acrylic on canvas — 76 × 101 cm — completed in 2010 and one of the most energetically painted works in Walt Viviers' collection. The subject is the female form, rendered in semi-abstraction: Viviers fragments and reassembles the figure through a dense field of warm reds, oranges, yellows and pinks, bold outlines carving through the colour. The result is less a depiction than a celebration — of movement, of form, of the expressive potential of acrylic on a generous canvas. The brushwork is confident and direct, with passages of impasto sitting alongside thinner, more fluid marks. Feminine Shapes belongs to a body of figurative-abstract work from this period that shows Viviers working at full creative stretch, using the human form as a vehicle for pure painterly investigation. The work is available for acquisition.