Jordan Marsh, Boston.
Fairhaven Homecoming exhibit.
The Career
Vivian Fernandes Lewis was born and raised in New Bedford. In her early twenties she moved across the harbor to Fairhaven and never left.
She spent her working life as a commercial artist — first at Jordan Marsh in Boston, the city's flagship department store, where she helped shape the visual language of a building that defined a region's retail life. Later, closer to home, she joined Bradlees, where she stayed through the rest of her career.
She raised her daughter Heidi as a single mom. The brushes that earned her living during the week were the same brushes that would, in time, paint everything else.
The Studio Upstairs
When retirement finally gave her the time, Vivian built a studio in the upper floor of her home and turned the discipline of decades into something entirely her own.
She painted from photographs she had taken on her travels — translating moments she had carried home into watercolor and oil. She accepted commissions for house portraits, returning to her clients' homes to photograph them in detail before sitting down to paint. Lighthouses called to her — most of all the ones at Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, which she painted again and again, finding something new each time.
She worked best around noon. In silence.
"I'm not sure she ever felt the piece was completely done." — Heidi, on her mother
The Civic Chapter
Vivian served as President of the Fairhaven Cultural Council, holding the seat for the maximum term the rules allowed. For more than a decade after her retirement, she ran the art exhibit at the Fairhaven Annual Homecoming — putting other artists' work on the wall alongside her own and, in doing so, putting the town's working creative life on display every year.
She gave Fairhaven the same eye she gave a watercolor.
What She Leaves
This site is her body of work — more than a hundred pieces in watercolor, oil, and paper collage. It is also, in a quieter way, what she taught without ever sitting anyone down to teach it.
In Heidi's words:
"She taught me how to focus in on a scene and look for the beauty in the scene. Look at the sky and see that it wasn't just blue or white clouds — there were multiple colors in everything."
Walk through her work the way you would walk through her house.
