NORMAN LUNDIN  was born in Los Angeles in 1938.   He grew up in Chicago and earned his B.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961.  Lundin attended the University of Cincinnati where he received his M.F.A. in 1963, worked briefly on the curatorial staff at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and then traveled to Norway on a Fulbright Grant where he studied at the University of Oslo.  He returned to the United States in 1964 to teach at the University of Washington.  Lundin is a respected member of the West Coast art community.  He has shown at the Seders Gallery since 1967 and his work is regularly included in solo and group exhibitions mounted by regional museums. He is also represented by galleries in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York and shows nationally in thematic and invitational exhibitions.

For the past thirty years Norman Lundin has worked with the figure, still life, and landscape. What has held his interest is light and how it defines and gives character to objects and interior and exterior spaces.   He is not concerned with literal description but rather the behavior of light.  In his earlier work the imagery carried a heavy emotional load; however, over the years Lundin has placed more emphasis on the formal structure of the work and opted to use images with more neutral content. He has moved  away from a narrative treatment of the figure to spare studio interiors and still lifes of wrapped packages and empty jars.  He observes that expression is essential to a good painting but it is dependent on formal strength and clarity.  For this reason he has chosen to consciously focus on formal considerations and allow expression to take care of itself.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
 

Just as one cannot have something "long" without having something "short" for comparison, one cannot have an "object" without a "void". It is the void that interests me. With this kind of priority I find that I must use objects that have little or no emotional association. Negative space is fragile if one wants to use it as the primary "subject matter" of a painting. Any object depicted that has significant emotional associations will tend to dominate (which is exactly what I don't want to happen). The objects are not there to be described; they are there to explain the space. I don't limit myself all the time, though, and, once in a while, I do use loaded subject matter.


Norman Lundin
October 2006





 



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