Mario Reis is an artist living and working in Duesseldorf, Germany and the USA. Born in 1953 in Weingarten, Germany, Reis studied at the State Academy of the Arts in Duesseldorf from 1973-78, and was a Masters student under Professor Guenther Uecker from 1978-79. Reis has become well known for his Nature Watercolour Series, an extensive body of works that as much as possible lets a natural body of water, not the artist do the "painting." Reis' project for over the past two decades has been to immerse stretched canvases into different rivers around the world and allow sedimentary deposits to form on the canvas over a specific period of time. The surprising palette of brown, green, grey, red and black tones built up in various textures displays unique characteristics of each particular river and traces of the water current's behaviour. The finished works reveal a "watercolour" portrait of each river.
