LATEST STUDIO WORK, 2011

Opus 39 Gallery, Nicosia ,Cyprus.
3rd – 15TH October 2011

Using pomegranates gathered from a local tree Kelly explores the painting process through traditional still life compositions. Using a mixed media of oil paint, charcoal and pencil the paintings appear softer than previous works whilst continuing to explore layers and washes that add depth and colour to this symbolic fruit.
In some religions the pomegranate tree was depicted in the Garden of Paradise and believed to be the forbidden fruit, the literal translation of pomegranate from Latin is seeded apple; pomme “apple” and granatus “seeded”. The pomegranate tree is thought to represent friendship and childhood innocence. Whilst red is the traditional colour used to represent life and death in many cultures, and during the bysantine period you were buried with a pomegranate in your hand.

The series of paintings are not symbolic but are more an exploration of the intense reds and purples the fruit displays through various stages of decay. Placed on a white table in the artist’s studio the high contrasts of colour made the fruit even more vivid. Through various compositions the pomegranates began to represent different social groupings; families, friends, being alone, young fresh, decaying and rotting.
The landscape series in the exhibition explores the Cyprus countryside where the Pomegranate tree can be found.

The private view will be held on Monday 3rd October 2011 and will be opened by the British High Commisioner, Mr Matthew Kidd at 8pm. All welcome.

Forthcoming Exhibitions

Kelly Norman will be participating in group shows this month at the following Galleries:

Apocalypse Gallery, Nicosia, Cyprus " Christmas at the Apocalypse"
11th Dec - 11th Jan 2011
call 00357 22300100 for info.

Rouan Gallery, Limassol, Cyprus " Christmas Exhibition"
17th Dec - 20th Jan 2011
call 00357 25350845 for info.

Dino Art Cafe, Limassol, Cyprus " Under the Tonne"
6th Dec - 10th Jan 2011
call 00357 25762030 for info.

Recent Studio Works

Gallery Rouan, Limassol.
23rd October to 3rd November 2009

The exhibition explores the painting process through approximately 25 oil paintings.

The first series in the exhibition challenges the developing urban landscape within Limassol and its juxtaposition to the natural environment. Focusing on tower blocks built in the 1980’s and 1990’s; the impact they have had on the peaceful Limassol vistas is explored through colour, texture and form. Asking the question, “What effect do these imposing structures have on the disappearing traditional, architectural landscape of old Limassol?” Paradoxically, these man made structures that were built for purpose (to house more people on a smaller plot of land), are now left to rot and die having never been maintained.

Kelly aims to capture the damp, ill maintained, crumbling, exteriors of the tower blocks through the layering of textures on the canvas. Using different hues of green washes, then wiping off the stains and paint spume to reveal decaying surfaces, various techniques are employed including scratching onto the canvas with sharp implements, focusing on the structure’s shape and roof tops containing hoards of satellite cables, arials and watertanks. The freshness of painterly marks, contradict the rugged and potent images. Deliberately choosing to work in monochrome creates a different and challenging image. Sap green was chosen because it’s naturally an organic colour, and represents the loss of the natural environment that has accommodated these tower blocks.

A series of oil studies on watermelons, iconic of summer and also representative of the painful acrid summer months in Cyprus, makes up the final part of the exhibition. The vivid reds and purples create a sharp contrast from the monochrome green of the tower block series.
Quite playful, fun and visual some have a darker, sinister side that emphasizes the putrid smell of decaying skin and flesh. The watermelon pink metamorphoses into a bruised purple and red, to resemble decaying animal carcasses. This series of paintings are much softer in their execution which explore organic natural forms that are both transparent and opaque. The compositions develop the smooth shape and forms found in nature, and move away from the harsh crumbling tower blocks.

Kelly Norman graduated from the University of Portsmouth in 1998 with a BA Hons in Art Design and Media .She then went on to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at The Cyprus College of Art in 2003.She lives and works in Limassol .





Notes on Green.

“Carrying the light from the moon to dye the mountain stream” - Xu Yin, Five Dynasties poet talking about Mi Se.

“It’s not easy bein’ green” - Kermit, The Muppets frog puppet, singing about identity.

In China green was a secret colour, so secret royalty could own it. Found on a special kind of porcelain called Mi Se pronounced “Mee Ser” meaning mysterious colour.

“Celadons” is the generic name given in China to all green coloured ceramics. Best described as misty, dreamy, ghostly, pale, foggy-delicate some of the best celadons are deeply flawed they have a deep spider’s web pattern on them or “crackle” which to some western tastes is strange. To Chinese people it looks tantalizing like the fissures in jade. The crackle effect has to be carefully managed so that paradoxically the bowl became perfect by being slightly imperfect. “You can’t get it too wrong, but you have to get it just wrong enough”. Celadon represents nature and harmony, the fading green of summer to earthy autumnal red. Its boldness to a salted appetite would have been like a sorbet to the glutted pallet.

Most striking are the hand painted wallpapers from china, green tendrils creeping up the walls with extra birds, flowers and even a special banana tree pasted on top. In the 1770’s a chemist experimenting with colour paint produced a most astonishing green “Scheele’s green” which contained levels of arsenic that were extremely poisonous! Manufacturers used it in a range of paints and papers, and for years’ people happily painted poison onto their walls.
The love of green was one shared by many artists, for of course green is in many ways the most natural colour in the world.

Opening of Art Exhibition

Opening of Kelly Norman s Art Exhibition “Recent Studio Works” by Dr Nadia Anaxagorou (Director of Cultural Services for the Limassol Municipality) at Rouan Gallery on Friday 23^rd October 2009.

Kelly Norman a graduate of University of Portsmouth in Art Design and Media completed a postgraduate diploma in Fine Art at the Cyprus College of Art at Lemba she now lives and works in Limassol.

To me, the perception and analysis of the light of Cyprus by Kelly and indeed by many foreign artists who work in Cyprus, is particulary interesting revealing a different dimention of both urban and rural environment, owing to a totally fresh and unhibited observation.

Thus the delineation of Lemesos vistas by Kelly possesses that penetrative,explorative perspective of form and colour that goes far beyond an abstract expressionistic rendition into a psychography of well-known, still alien,parts of the city such as the GSO and Enaerios areas in the seafront, or the Ayia Napa neighbourhood, with the towerblocks that have taken the place of green fields,gardens and traditional houses.

Through a rigorous, textured colour, produced by multiple washes of green, her favourite colour and the most natural one in the world, Kelly builds monochromatic transcendental architectural images of Lemesos, using encaustic on oils, with thick layers of wax and scratches allover the canvas to represent the deep wounds inflicted on the city by decaying structures and facades of buildings and a sky on their roof-tops full of satellite cables arials and water tanks.

That state of ugliness and neglect of decaying, often dilapidated blocks and that feeling of unrest and anxiety they evoke,is washed away by a paint of sap green, an organic colour that diffuses calmness, serenity and contemplation throughout, bringing about a cathartic yellow-ochreish radiation of hope and optimism in the city.

A second series of studies features watermelons, symbolic of the cruel summer heat in Cyprus and alluding in their red, purple and green translucency to decomposed bodies, physical or architectural, since the prison wall erected by the seaside constructions, blocks the invigorating breeze and causes suffocation.

Congratulations to Kelly for a very unusual, idiosyncratic, organic, expressionistic symbolism.

new site launched

Welcome to the new site launched for the artsit Kelly Norman. The site contains up to date information on exhibitions and new artwork. Grish Art, responsible for the design and construction of the site, hopes you visit regularly and enjoy your stay.

www.grishart.com