Artists and writers on Nora Reza’s paintings (2008)

"I cannot imagine a better thing to do than to go to your opening in Provence…”

— Nathan Oliveira, Professor Emeritus of Art, Stanford University, included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou and MOMA

“I love the beautiful jewel colors of your paintings…wonderful”  

— Patricia Hampl,  author of BLUE ARABESQUE,  Matisse and the Odalesques, and many books of critical essays, poetry, memoir.

“The compositions are VERY strong, the colors bright and luminous.”

— Ronald Bowen,  Professor of Art, Ecole Americain de Paris, painter.

“The painting "Cerises":  Many, many parts--every part, in fact--of the whole are masterful. The terrace side of the painting vibrates with warm color adjustments. The plants at the bottom of the terrace are delicious.  I see a figure...interesting and subtle. The reflection and the shadows are fine. The layers of flowers, the window, the orange-white-blue bands on the left and the chair and wall behind, the distant landscape, all so great...”
— Richard Newlin, author of “Richard Diebenkorn, Works on Paper”, and  other works.

“Nora Reza's work has hung on my walls in Parma, Italy  since 1980. It has fed my days and quickened my spirit. We were intense friends in California, where Nora Reza's warm, burning colors looked nothing like the landscape around her. Her acqua blues and oranges were filled with vivid interior life, colors as emotions. Her subjects--flowers, tables, rooms--often tilted and pushed with strange tensions, a sense of confinement that would not accept limits. Her heart's eye defied logical arrangements.  Her work and her restless interrogations of her compositions set her far above many other women I knew who painted. She lives a calling, a burden and a gift.

Her present work, surprising, so strong and sure, so wise, is a distillation of decades of struggle, destruction and pushing on until the work radiates the power of having penetrated beauty and the fear of beauty.  Her new work, has absorbed lessons of detachment and abstraction, so that her canvases give energies that now are more fully free.”

— Wallis Wilde Menozzi, Books:  Mother Tongue An American Life in Italy (North Point Press), Heron Songs, poetry, Occasional Works Press
Essays:  Best Spiritual Writing 2002, Harpers anthology

“IT'S AN EXHIBITION OF HARMONY, PROGRESSION, LIGHT, JOY, ASTONISHING RICHNESS OF TEXTURE AND IMAGE. MANY PAINTERS LIVING IN THIS REGION OF THE SUN PAINT IN MUDDY BROWNS OR PALE GREYS AND GREENS; YOUR PAINTINGS ARE OF THE ASTONISHING LIGHT THAT INFORMS AND TRANSFORMS THE COLOURS OF THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THIS PLACE. THE SENSE OF AN INTERIOR (INSIDE THE PERSON'S LIFE AND INSIDE THE PERSON'S LIVING SPACE) AND EXTERIOR, MERGING AND SEPARATE, PHYSICALLY AND IN FANTASY - GIVES COMPLEXITY, DEPTH AND PASSION BENEATH THE SURFACE LIGHTNESS AND JOY. NOW I START TO REPEAT MYSELF: BEING NO CRITIC, I FIND THAT CONVEYING IN WORDS THE PASSION AND LIGHT THAT YOU HAVE CONVEYED IN PAINT, IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE.

I HOPE THIS EXPO MAKES A HUGE IMPRESSION. WE WANTED SO MANY - THE LADY ALONGEE NEAR THE DOOR, AND MANY OF THE STILL LIVES (ALL FAR FROM STILL; ALL ALIVE AND LEAPING)  AND I SPECIALLY LOVE THE NORA WITH THE WHITE FLOWERS - SO FULL OF EMOTION AND YEARNING - OR SO IT SEEMS TO ME - VERY MOVING.”

— Maureen O’Brien, author of “Deadly Reflections” (HB Editions)

“I remember your saying that you kept reworking paintings and that they never seemed to get finished, and I thought of this the other day when I was reading an article on Emily Dickinson in the New York Review of Books.  It is suggested in the article that "her poems were always in progress, meant to be revised, reevaluated, and reconceived, especially when dispatched to different readers."  Thus, "her true Flaubert was Penelope, to invert a famous allusion, forever unraveling what she had figured on the loom the day before," with permanence only a convention, "and it's the 'route of evanescence' so magically embodied by Dickinson's poems that is the truest nature of poetry."  So you are in very good company!  However, having said this, the examples of your work look perfect as they are.”

— Deborah Thomas, “Beyond Genre: Melodrama, Comedy and Romance in Hollywood Films” (Cameron & Hollis, 2000),  “Reading Hollywood: Spaces and Meanings in American Film” (Wallflower Press, 2001).

“Je suis très impressionnée par l'ensemble de tes nouveaux travaux et voulais t'en féliciter sans attendre …. (mention spéciale pour Femme avec tasse: superbe ).. encore bravo!”

— Sophie Masson, photographe et auteur de “Paris Trompe l'oeil, Des Artistes Dans La Ville”

“La peinture de Nora Reza invite a la contemplation.

Dans ses tableaux il y a toujours une perspective qui attire vers la profondeur, une silhouette qui guide l'oeil vers un ailleurs, un reflet qui souligne la transparence des choses.

Tout en etant familier, son univers evoque le dedoublement d'un regard qui "reflechit", qui sait percevoir toute la lumiere emprisonnee dans un décor quotidien, la composition d'un interieur. Une fenetre s'ajoute a une autre, l'espace fuit vers une terrasse, et l'infini s'eclaire.”

— Claude Thibault, auteur de 'Un Coeur en hiver' (Albin Michel)

"Nora Reza réussit le tour de force d'exprimer par une peinture figurative une poésie qui va au-delà de tout sujet pour laisser la place à une organisation abstraite des couleurs et de la lumière, produisant une harmonie rarement égalée."
— Zacharias Jeridi, anthropologue, co-auteur de "Ferveurs contemporaines", Ed. L'Harmattan

“C'est avec beaucoup d'emotion que je me suis introduit dans votre atelier.   J'ai connu une soiree d'emerveillement parmi vos peintures. Votre travail a ete le declic d'un texte que je viens de commencer aux aurores. Merci.”

— Francois Perche, auteur de Les Mots de Mon Pere, ed, HB et des numbreux livres de poesie, des romans, et textes de theatre. 

“Mon chemin a croisé celui de Nora Reza lorsequ'elle étudiait les beaux arts à l'Université de Stanford dans les annees soixante dix, avec les peintres Nathan Oliveira et Frank Lobdell.

La fermeté de sa vision et des coups de pinceau qui la réalisaient m'ont stupéfaite. Au cours des années, j'ai suivi sa démarche alors qu'elle explorait de nombreuses alternatives picturales et interrogeait les profondeurs du moi, cherchant sa voie à travers les impasses et les ouvertures d'un difficile labyrinthe. A chaque pas de ce chemin spiritual, je découvrais dans ses toiles une beauté captivante.
 
Dans sa maturité, son oeuvre est devenue une succession de merveilleuses configurations d'espace, de lumière, de couleur, au milieu desquels des silhouettes révèlent la fragilité et la présence du sacré dans l'être humain.”

— Dr. Annette Herskovits,  auteur de "Language and Spatial Cognition", Cambridge University Press.