SHEILA NORGATE.JPG)
Born 1950 in Toronto, Ontario
Resides Gabriola Island, BC
Sheila Norgate was born in 1950 in the heart of downtown Toronto in the back seat of a Buick. She eventually migrated to the west coast where she settled in 1975.
A dazzling yet uninspired career with a major bank had run its course by 1981 and she found herself dabbling in watercolours. After an aborted attempt at formal art education in 1985, Norgate became convinced of the importance of finding her own way. Since then she has done just that.
Norgate believes strongly in human rights issues – especially those affecting women – and her imagery has been put to good use by many non-profit organizations across Canada. An ardent feminist, she created a body of work around the issue of etiquette directed at women (from the 1940’s and 1950’s). To her delight (and that of many literary critics) it was published in 1997 in book form as “Storm Clouds Over Party Shoes, Etiquette Problems for the Ill-Bred Woman”.
Today Norgate’s vibrant abstracted canvases bearing her trademark iconography of birds, hearts, houses and miscellaneous flora can be found in galleries across Canada. She makes her home on Gabriola Island, BC.
ARTIST STATEMENT
dog.matic
new works on all fours
I’ve had way too much fun working on this latest series of paintings. There ought to be a bylaw, an ordinance, a statute. Maybe there is. Maybe I will face prosecution.
I’ve been digging around in thrift stores looking for old dog books; that is to say old books about dogs, not books about old dogs. I also set off on a quest to locate quirky bits of dog data. Now I know a lot of things I didn’t used to know. Important things like the number of chromosomes that make up a dog (78) and how in Palding Ohio, a police officer may bite a dog to quiet her. I learned that at the peak of his career, Rin Tin Tin was the only dog in Los Angeles to be listed in the telephone directory and that people who make ugly faces at dogs in Oklahoma may be fined or jailed. I can tell you that a medium sized dog makes about 5O tongue laps to drink a pint of water. I can also tell you that one sheep’s head will make sufficient good soup for 4O or 5O smallish hounds. Some of this material may make its way onto the surface of my canvases and the rest of it will no doubt remain lodged in my post-menopausal memory bank. Since I seem to have a finite allotment of space in this bank, I fear that some of this dogma has replaced other information previously stored there. I can only hope that this other information wasn’t anything too important.
What I’d really like to know is how it is that dogs became man’s best friend and girls had to settle for diamonds? Give me a pooch over a brooch any day.
Sheila Norgate
August 2OO6
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