The power and poignancy of Rive Nestor’s sculptures have been achieved through her exposure to traditional and contemporary art training and education. Her early years of study at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts emphasized the importance of anatomy, design, and the early and modern masters.
After five years of study and an independent art career, she traveled to Europe to study at the Institute of AmericanUniversities, Aix-en-Provence, France. It was while studying the works of Rodin, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Boudin, Degas and Kokoschka that her work took on a unique identity.
She had the realization that art is very simply an artist’s response to his or her world, influenced by the traditions and responses that have come before them.
She had the realization that art is very simply an artist’s response to his or her world, influenced by the traditions and responses that have come before them. Mount Holyoke College, where she subsequently received her Studio Arts degree, afforded her the opportunity for independent study in various sculpture medias.
Rive’s art is her response to life, drawn up and given back through delicate, sometimes harsh, but always truthful renderings of a moment. A feeling encapsulated in bronze, clay, metal, stone or canvas.