Vivian Grapentin always enjoyed art as a little girl, winning some school prizes, but after the sad passing of her second child, who was only three, due to a brain tumour, she turned to painting as a way to manage her grief.
Born in Malaysia, Vivian’s studies in Lincoln Nebraksa were interrupted by the sweet allure of love and marriage. Before leaving for Cape Town she had completed a BSc in Interior Design. “I did not complete my dual degree in Fine Arts and changed it to a minor in Arts instead in 2001. So as far as art training went I studied Art History, Drawing 101 and 102, Printmaking and Graphic Design but not painting, which I am currently doing.”
Her first painting was of her eldest daughter, with her fairy wings in the garden, from a photo taken at her birthday party, and this sold online to a patron from New York. Soon after the sale of this work, Vivian and her family moved to New Zealand. Due to the upheaval of relocation (again) and having more children, she managed only two paintings in the following seven years. At the end of 2015, after unsuccessful attempts to get a visa for her sickly father-in-law to visit New Zealand, she decided to paint animal portraits as a way of making some extra money to enable her family of seven to fly to Cape Town to see him. Unfortunately he passed away before they made it there. “I’d like to think that his legacy, as well as my daughter’s, lives on through my paintings as they were the inspiration to begin it in the first place.”
See Vivian's web page here: http://www.vgrapentin-art.com/ .
