QUOTES


“He’s holding up the mirror for us to look at.  So here’s the choice we have, either to look at it, avoid it, or do something about it, those are the choices we have.  But the truth, he still speaks the truth – and hopes that we will pay attention.”  Reverend John Butcher

 

"In Norman I saw a Don Quixote of sorts. A man who looked at society as a place where he as a knight could don armor and champion the wronged, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed. Norman's work is furious, brutal, intelligent and heroic. Above all, his work is honest and courageous...."   Geno Rodriguez, 1985

 

“The path I followed chose me, not me it. I was led to Painting by experiencing life, it's contemplation, and a desperate need to give it expression”  Irving Norman, 1983

 

“Disturbing as the work at its best can be, it is the inevitable result of a humanist vision obsessively focused on the fundamental failure of theTwentieth Century to improve the human condition. Norman’s voice as an artist is seldom pleasant, but the message that it conveys is an important one." Paul J. Karlstrom, Journal Report, West Coast Regional Center, 2nd. Quarter, 1988

 

“I understand that some people are trying to make political propaganda out of my pictures. I wish to express nothing but contempt for such efforts…Let all politicians of the right and of the left and all in between keep their bloody hands and scheming minds out of the field of art.”   Irving Norman,   1959

 

"Norman can command with facility any aesthetic challenge placed before him. His figurative approach is personal and original and shows an even greater strength and solidification than before. There is no eclecticism in his work, no uncertainty, no leaning on a cliched figure pattern, no color for the sake of color....none of the weaknesses of a lesser artist....." Roberta Loach, Irving Norman...Revisited, Visual Dialogues, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1976