ABOUT THE ARTIST > BIOGRAPHY and STATEMENT
BIOGRAPHY
"At age five I fell in love with painting when I lived in the back of my grandfather’s paint store in Brooklyn. It was my favorite place to play: Shiny paint cans, tubes of color and the smell of linseed oil permeating the store were imprinted on me at a very early age. Saturday morning children’s drawing classes at the Brooklyn Museum and special high school art classes at Pratt Institute were a natural progression. After earning a BFA, I went on to get my graduate degree in Art and Education at Hunter College in New York. Studio Art class with Robert Motherwell were a high point."
Norma Greenwood’s canvases are painterly, structured, architectonic and robust, animated and bright. She creates still life compositions around sensuous forms that evolve into representational images. Her new series of figurative portraits depicts people in a way that reveals something about them as well as herself. "When I paint someone else, I am actually exploring myself."
Greenwood created a permanent mosaic tile double mural for the Jacksonville Florida International Airport, after being awarded a public art commission. In 2009 she was a finalist for an MTA Arts in Transit project and more recently, a finalist for a public art project in Beijing, China titled, Half The Sky.
Awards include three grants from the NY State Council on the Arts, the Ludwig Vogelstein grant, a George Sugarman award and a NY Foundation for the Arts award. She also received a grant for the Artist Documentation Project from the National Center for Creative Aging: Art Cart, Saving The Legacy.
Greenwood’s work has been exhibited in the Queens Museum, the Katonah Museum of Art, the Islip Art Museum, GE Corporate Headquarters in Fairfield, CT, New York University Kimmel Gallery, NY Foundation for the Arts, and The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens, NY. Greenwood is represented in private and public collections including the Museum of American Folk Arts, AT&T, City University of NY Art Gallery, Citicorp, and Columbia Pictures. She exhibits work in her home town of New York City as well as internationally.
Norma Greenwood’s canvases are painterly, structured, architectonic and robust, animated and bright. She creates still life compositions around sensuous forms that evolve into representational images. Her new series of figurative portraits depicts people in a way that reveals something about them as well as herself. "When I paint someone else, I am actually exploring myself."
Greenwood created a permanent mosaic tile double mural for the Jacksonville Florida International Airport, after being awarded a public art commission. In 2009 she was a finalist for an MTA Arts in Transit project and more recently, a finalist for a public art project in Beijing, China titled, Half The Sky.
Awards include three grants from the NY State Council on the Arts, the Ludwig Vogelstein grant, a George Sugarman award and a NY Foundation for the Arts award. She also received a grant for the Artist Documentation Project from the National Center for Creative Aging: Art Cart, Saving The Legacy.
Greenwood’s work has been exhibited in the Queens Museum, the Katonah Museum of Art, the Islip Art Museum, GE Corporate Headquarters in Fairfield, CT, New York University Kimmel Gallery, NY Foundation for the Arts, and The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens, NY. Greenwood is represented in private and public collections including the Museum of American Folk Arts, AT&T, City University of NY Art Gallery, Citicorp, and Columbia Pictures. She exhibits work in her home town of New York City as well as internationally.
