I
have not always thought of myself as an artist although ever since I can
remember I have had a pencil or pen in my hand. I suppose I have my own
vocabulary by which I make sense of the world, a visual vocabulary if
you like.
Words
and images are interchangeable in that a picture can be described with
words and a description in words can inspire an image. So norrisnuvo is
an interchangeable version of my identity, I cannot make too much change
in the physical world but the image that is norrisnuvo can change in an
instant, he can appear however I want him to. So who is norrisnuvo? This
can only be answered by another question, who are you?
I
was always getting told off in school for covering the margins of my notebooks
with doodles and scenes, they helped me remember the lessons far better
than words ever did, but my teachers did not understand.
The
world around us is profiled and described and images are built up of our
societies and the individual needs of its members. On an individual basis
we also use images to identify ourselves; football shirts, fashion styles,
uniforms, make-up, gendered clothing and age related pastimes all build
to give us an image, a picture of what we are told is right and what is
wrong.
I
remember things in pictures, easily remembering faces, while names and
words evade me like dissipating smoke on the wind. I carry a three dimensional
map inside my head which is both my history and my life-space. I also
have a visual image of self that is projected into this space to represent
me in all human interactions. This body image is what you would call my
‘outer’ self, or my physical body. It is this image that deals
with the day-to-day aspects of living and creativity. It talks, it walks,
it eats and sings and sleeps; this visual and physical me is the man that
I am.
I
always think that people talk too much and look too little, missing the
visual clues that are scattered around us in the landscape. The repeated
shapes that nature uses in construction of so many things, five leafed
plants, five fingered people, five toed frogs; spheres and pillars abound
in the world around us, as so squares and planes; these shapes hidden
in our daily landscape go unnoticed for the most part, but they influence
us in subtle ways.
But
I am more than that, more than just an image made up from my experiences
and my physique, from my earthbound timeline and the landscape I inhabit.
I have imagination. That imagination is the root of my visual vocabulary
and is also the birth pool of my alter-ego, my other self, the one who
can do the impossible.
Only
by recognition of the visual world for what it is rather than what you
have been told it is will give you a glimpse of some reality, for me only
by the creation of my own visual vocabulary did I come to read the pictures
that the world displays for those to see it
