Herb J. Ariss, 1916 - 2009 was born in Guelph, Ontario and as a youth, his family moved to Toronto. After high school graduation, he was selected to attend a special art course at Western Technical School under L. A. C. Panton and later enrolled at the Ontario College of Art.
He served in the Canadian Army during the war and on his return, restarted his art studies at Northern Vocational School and attended the Ontario College of Education. Ariss taught briefly at Western Technical School before being hired in 1947 to teach at London's H. B. Beal Technical School and became Head of the Art Department in 1964. He was instrumental in bringing live nude models to the school for life drawing. He was a major influence in the development of many London artists in the 1960 and 70s including Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe
Ariss worked in a wide variety of media: graphite, charcoal, pastel, mixed media and watercolour and was famous for his beautiful and magnificent daily journal entries. His representational style frequently made allusions to artistic, historical and military figures which he admired from Ancient Art to those of the immediate past. Collections include: National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum London, McIntosh Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery, New Brunswick Museum.