In C. Michael Norton’s large-scale acrylic paintings, competing surface tensions confront each other creating a visual orchestration of discordant and harmonic tonalities that the artist likens to seeing sounds. With an historic nod to territory mined by Kandinsky, Matisse's late cut outs thru De Kooning & Pollock, Norton listens to a range of music including jazz musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis as he forms space that plays with depth, perspective and frontality.
The chromatic intensity of his palate - the densely pigmented colors applied in a layering of smeared and collided passages - is seductive yet cacophonous. Norton’s countless thick layers of paint are juxtaposed against sections of raw linen which become open passages or holes in a membrane. The artist talks about his work as “building” a painting. Using mud-knives instead of paint brushes, he constructs organic volumes and architectonic planes, generating vibrant skins which stretch across the canvas to embrace a complex web of ideas.
C. Michael Norton’s has shown his work at FiveMyles, Brooklyn, NY, Maxwell Fine Arts, Peekskill, NY, Tama Gallery, NYC, Barbara Greene Gallery, NYC, , Museo Civico d’Arte Contemporanea, Albissola, Italy, Galerie Terre d’Art, St. Paul de Vence, France. Galerie Bercovy-Fugier, Paris, France. Norton received an MA and MFA from San Jose State University, San Jose, CA.
