NORMAN

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work has evolved over many years, but has always found its roots in movement and rhythm. My odyssey began in dance photography, the still image capturing the dynamic and elegant human form. My images gravitated to abstraction; then photography expanded into painting. Today I work in New Media (digital), where I can further blend and reshape the intersection of image, color, and form. Yet through each change, what has remained constant has been the sense of motion: an active, sometimes frenetic picture plane.  

Many years ago, I developed a process of photographing objects or scenes through Pennsylvania glass block, using the warped bricks as a kind of lens.

The way the glass bended, distorted and broke up lines was similar to the motion of a dancer in a still photograph. Likewise, these qualities imparted a strong rhythmic, kinetic quality as well. The images had an immediacy, even a wildness to them. I sometimes use pieces of these photographs in my new compositions.

Out of the abstraction, symbols emerge. Circles are frequent in my recent work. To me they symbolize both the continuity of recurrence and the endlessness of infinity. Of course, more concretely, they may appear as likenesses of rings or the moon. Here too, such suggested forms bring their own symbolism, stretching beyond abstraction.

Today, I work with digital tools. The results offer a lot of variety in motion, just as in contemporary dance. Sometimes languorous, sometimes ecstatic, again, the motion is always there, asking the eye, and maybe the heart, to follow.