HAS Member Portfolio - Margaret Norris

Contact Details:
Email: possums_au@yahoo.com
Web: http://www.margaretnorris.net

Margaret is an Alumnus of London University of the Arts, and graduated from the Byam Shaw School of Arts campus in 1999 with a BA (Hons.) degree in Fine Arts. After several years living and working abroad, she returned home to Australia in 2000 and now lives at Dural, NSW.

Her abstract paintings are based on natural phenomena: Landscape, cellular structure & microcosmic images. Margaret's interest lies in macroscopic versus microscopic duality. Her paintings use light & colour to enhance natural structures from the world around us, sometimes viewed and enhanced through electron microscopy. The scale of such cellular activity is magnified to massive proportions in order that the final paintings can measure up to two metres squared. The activity then becomes intensely dramatic in colour and gesture, the forms cascade through their picture planes which remain flat and yet all encompassing, reminiscent of colour field painting.

Alongside her paintings, Margaret makes photograms (unique photographic images with no camera or negative involved). When at University, she researched the visual effects created by growing micro-organisms on photographic paper. The treated paper is used to grow the microbes in the same way as a petri dish containing nutrients is used in laboratories to develop cultures. These photograms form beautiful works in their own right as well as providing the source material and inception of larger painted works.

Her works are held in Private Collections in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.
For a full copy of Margaret's Resumé, please click here (567KB).

Selected solo & group exhibitions:

2009	Solo Exhibition, Marie-France Salon & Gallery, West Pymble, NSW
2009	Solo Exhibition, "Bar Amalfi", Ramsgate Beach, NSW
2009	Northern Expressions Group Exhibition, Parliament House, Sydney
2009	Finalist, 55th Annual Hunter's Hill Art Exhibition, NSW
2006 - 2008	Northern Expressions Group Exhibitions, NSW
2004 - 2009	Ku-Ring-Gai Art Society Group Exhibitions, NSW
2007	Arcadian Artists Open Studio Weekend, Galston, NSW
2003	Finalist, 52nd Blake Prize, Sydney
2003	TAP Gallery, "Real Refusés", Sydney
2003	TAP Gallery, Group Exhibition, Sydney
2003	Finalist, 49th Annual Hunter's Hill Art Exhibition, NSW
2001	Solo Exhibition, Alta Gallery, Sydney
2000	Solo Exhibition, Zella Gallery, London, UK

Memberships

Hornsby Art Society
Ku-Ring-Gai Art Society
Northern Expressions Artist Collective

A Walk in the Park - Berowra Valley Regional Park

In an abstract way, I have endeavoured to share the pleasure of a stroll along one of the many walking tracks throughout this beautiful bushland reserve near my home of 25 years.
Dust off your walking shoes & prepare for a walk in the park. The viewer is invited to participate in a hike through the beautiful Berowra Valley Regional Park. The use of a loose, abstract style is designed to transport the viewer into the bush, its flora, fauna & waterways. Overlaying the whole are suggestions of the area?s defining waterway, the Berowra Creek and its tributaries.

100cm X 240cm (3 panels)

Channel Country I

Flying out of Darwin, I was captivated by the way the sun turned the flooded waterways of the Channel country of south-western Queensland into a gleaming strip of silver.

61cm X 122cm (diptych)

Channel Country II

100cm X 160cm (diptych)