(Click the pictures on the left for a higher resolution image.)

Latest: Exhibition at the artists home
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Artist's Statement

Born in Sussex in 1960, I was initially interested in clay sculpture, but moved to painting whilst studying Fine Art at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. 1 was always interested in colour and my early work consisted of tightly figurative landscape and figure painting made directly from life. The techniques and discipline of this way of working form a solid basis for my current more expressive work. After graduating in 1982, I worked for ten years as a community artist in a variety of school, hospital and community settings in Wales and London. I continued to develop and exhibit my painting during this time and in 1993 moved to Pembrokeshire to concentrate on my own work. I now paint full time and live near St. Davids with my partner and baby daughter

It was the wild and rugged landscape that had begun to form the subject of my work which brought me to Pembrokeshire. There followed an intense period of painting and drawing out in all weathers on the cliffs and islands of this western coast, getting to know the structure and the atmosphere of the area. Having assimilated this experience and observation, my technique has become freer in the struggle to respond directly to the power of the landscape and the dynamism of the weather through the paint and brush strokes. As a result, some of my paintings are heavily layered and richly textured, sometimes incorporating sand, feathers and other elements found on the rocks and shoreline, while others are made up of simple thin washes of colour. Each painting signifies a direct response to a particular moment in time, a certain light or cloud formation; an elemental sense of living "on the edge", between the sky, rock and water, is fundamental to my work.

"The New Academy Gallery has recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and in that time, unsurprisingly, we have seen countless landscape artists from around Britain and beyond. Yet there are few artists who can rival Linda Norris in her ability to capture the essence and beauty of a landscape in such an economy of brush strokes. Her work is inexorably rooted in the Welsh countryside, but her unerring,feel for both the savagery and gentility of nature means that many of the gallery's visitors (who often cheerily admit to having never been anywhere near Pembrokeshire) are still captivated by the innate power of her work. We are proud and delighted to exhibit Linda Norris's painting at our gallery. "
The New Academy Gallery

"An exhilarating sense of freedom runs throughout the work, a freedom transmitted by the sheer clarity and spontaneous precision of the paintings. "
Douglas Houston, Poet

"I've lived in Pembrokeshire all my life and Linda's work really reflects the wildness of the place, what Pembrokeshire is all about - craggy rocks, the shar pness, the wind. You feel you can see these views from anywhere, they are real to me. " Neale Lewis, Business Banking Manager

"Linda's work is a mess, but in the end you can see something! "
Darren, aged 8

"The lines of Linda's painting can almost make you feel the gale smearing your coat to your back and snapping the hem in front of you . . . as you step back from it, the smudges. and scrapes of paint turn into swirling birds over the swell which is heaving into clefts in the cliffs. "
Mike Grundon, The Shetland Times