ARTIST INFORMATION - an overview

Self taught artist,  Helen Norton settled in Broome WA in 1985 after
10 years of travelling and working in the Western Deserts in the
most remote areas of the Australian outback. At 16 years she left
Melbourne alone on a train to Adelaide having no idea or plan of
what turned into a lengthy and unusual sojourn. Beginning on the
Nullabor plains at a remote roadhouse, she was soon to become a
professional feral animal shooter and trapper, stock camp cook,
jillaroo, station hand, bronco yard builder and truck driver as well
as a stint working in a geriatric psychiatric hospital as a nursing aid.
These adventures had weaved her path endlessly and consistently
through the Gibson, the Great  Sandy, the Simpson and Sturt’s Stony
deserts for those years.

At 26 she settled (slightly) for the next 14 years in Broome and
developed her own well-known style and essence as an artist while
continuing to engage with ‘other projects’. She broadened her
travels through commissions to Europe and the USA where she
nurtured her curiosity and enquiry into the nature of human essence
and behaviour regardless of and because of culture. In between
venturing closer to home into the more remote Kimberley and
Pilbara regions. Here she was inspired by the archetypal and
timeless sacredness of the landscape and became aware of
curiously felt premonitions of significance in areas later found to be
sacred Aboriginal sites, that seemed to not need to be named to be
felt and instinctively known.

Much was learned through observing the tenacity, independence
and eccentricity of the people within these remote, but basic and
material luxury poor locations, which had a richness of experience
however that surpassed poverty of ‘things’. 

During her time in Broome, and being entrepreneurial by nature,
she established her own very successful art galleries, Cockatoo
Galleries, as well as an art publishing and framing factory.
This she confesses as a logical and obvious next step, was
to facilitate the flow of work from studio to market more
efficiently, and it worked.  During this era – due to the ventures
of English entrepreneur, Lord Alistair McAlpine, Broome
was receiving some very interesting visitors from around
the world, and this exposure was inspiring. The opportunities
opened up including commissions for Qantas and exhibition
in Europe and on the QE2. In between Helen ventured into
other areas including the purchasing and successful restructuring
and sale of an earthmoving company at the Cadjeput Mine.

Leaving Australia in 2000 after a physical collapse , she become an
expatriate resident in Vanuatu which led to more cross cultural
layering of understanding.

She then moved to a lush 55 acre green farm in the
Obi Obi Valley of Queensland with her two sons. Helen continued
to exhibit whilst completing a Masters Degree in Analytical Psychology.

She became aware of the need to expose her boys to what city life
was about given they had never lived in one so far. 
Moving to Fremantle in Perth West Australia she established her own
gallery and exposed the boys to traffic lights amongst other things.

Helen now lives in the Perth hills, at a ‘respectable distance’ from the 
hustle bustle, with a birds eye across the city.

Her obvious love of the outback and her curiosity around the
human condition is brilliantly captured in her internationally
acclaimed work.  Norton’s work smacks of deep psychological
questioning. Her obvious interest in this field comes through
as a constant challenge to the viewer to look deeper than the first
sensing impression.  The works are always “good to look at”, with
an emphasis on seduction of the senses.  Perhaps this seduction
with beauty assists the overcoming of defences towards the
imagery allowing some of the very complex alchemical messages
layered through the work to become available should one wish to
engage on that level. Norton feels that its up to the viewer as to
how much they wish to get out of her imagery. She sees her role
does hold more responsibility than to just serve her own ego in a
narcissistic way as a ‘keeper of magical mysteries’ which can’t be
shared with others at their own subjective levels of preference and
perception.

She is not particularly an ‘artisan’ or interested in art for arts sake
and prefers to think of it as a tool or medium for assisting herself
and others to find more meaningful and creative the trials and
tribulations of the journey of life.  She has often preferred herself
as a writer or poet by nature, and does not sit comfortably with
the limiting title as an ‘artist’. 

“Painting is a great negotiating medium for complex thinking to manifest. 
Its been a great outlet for my ravenous imagination to express and
communicate to others. Without it I  might have been locked up as
mad!  Painting has allowed me to
become an inventor or eternal  explorer of reality”.