I seriously don't know how I missed this, and I feel bad because if I had known I would have shared much sooner about the great wife of artist Matte Stephens -- her name is Vivienne Strauss. I mean I knew of her, but I had no clue that she is also an artist who has not 1 but 3 Etsy shops! Yes three! Oh the many sides of Vivienne Strauss...

The first etsy shop is called The Other Side of Vivienne where her paintings are sold, then there's a shop called The Double Sided Vivienne with original collages, and finally the third featuring vintage patterns called Modern Design 901.

I stumbled upon her paintings when I was looking at Matte's fun owl head costume and noticed a comment there from his wife, and I followed the comment straight to her Flickr photostream where I discovered this whole WORLD of lively art by Viv herself. Then I located her shops and can clearly see her eye is for retro quirky characters that range from Josephine Baker to ladies with poodles and oh-so-posh lifestyles.

I'm quite pleased to have found Vivienne and to know that Matte and Viv are a couple of really cool who do what they love, are in love, and making people happy with their art. But you know what they say... behind every good man is a GREAT woman so I should have known than Vivienne must be some kind of wonderful because look at the mega-successful Matte. Three cheers for artistic couples!

(images from vivienne strauss)