Norma Alonzo

Painting 

The first thing I do every morning, before anything else, is walk my dogs. It begins as a labor of love, and quickly turns into a much needed and savored time. I am always surprised and delighted that my walk immediately connects me to earth and sky. Every walk is a moment to reflect on the subtle, or not so subtle, changing of seasons. I am surrounded by the smell of dew on the trees, and the deep blue vistas of mountains, at times covered in snow. Multi-colored ravines wind up through the hills eventually pointing to an ever-changing sky. I hear the sound of birds waking to the cool morning. I see my dogs taking time to smell the morning, gaze into the distance, and note the changes the day’s weather will bring. They remind me that we must take our time and move into the world at our own pace before anything else.

My latest body of work examines the way we process what we feel—the metaphysical and the sensory. Through paint I examine our place in the midst of the constant motion of living in these times. After tackling life-changing personal issues, I felt courageous. This allowed me to trust my work—work informed by years of experimentation with the formal elements of line, form, mass and texture; my love of landscape; more than a passing nod to art history; and a trace of my design roots. It has been a year of painting dangerously: a culmination of 25 years of experience. My contemporary abstractions are a complex interplay of tension and energy. Dark marks woven into the paintings corral and embrace the color and light, signifying the push and pull of day-to-day living. My paintings explore the power of self-reflection, equilibrium, and peace. I aim to convey universal redemption.

Norma Alonzo has always taken her painting life seriously, albeit privately. An extraordinarily accomplished artist, she has been painting for over 25 years. Beginning as a landscape painter, she quickly transitioned to an immersion in all genres to experiment and learn. Alonzo has come to a place where she believes she has something to offer, something to put forth into the world. 2017 marks the first venture into the larger art world for Alonzo. Recent exhibitions include: International Museum of Art, 50th Arts International Exhibition, El Paso, Texas; Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts; Royal Ulster Academy of Arts, Belfast, United Kingdom; Art in Embassies, Windhoek, Namibia; High Desert Museum, Bend, Oregon; Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, California. She will have a solo exhibition at the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, California, in 2019.

More on Norma Alonzo's work can be found on our Links page.