Norman Kirkham RGI

About

I enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art at the age of 16 and emerged 5 years later in 1957 with a DA and a postgraduate diploma in interior design, just in time to allow me to pack my bags, including the obligatory duffel coat and Jesus sandals denoting an artist, to do my National Service.
Thereafter I returned to Glasgow to work first for Wylie and Lochhead, then Macdonald Brothers as an interior designer.

I wakened up one morning in 1975, realising that life was passing me by, and that if I was going to achieve anything, I had to give up the day job, and make a commitment to painting.
I love painting. The smell of linseed oil and turpentine. The tactile quality of paint.

I like living and working in Glasgow, and complain endlessly that I miss ‘grey ground and tenements’ when I am made to go away on holiday – but as a recent trip to the North of Scotland proved it usually produces several paintings!

I have an ever present drive to create something, and cannot stop looking, no matter where I am.