Islands by Norman Hyams

Norman Hyams commenced this body of work in 2022. He is a focussed and committed painter, returning time and again to the same subject matter, seeking within its familiarity an exciting unfamiliarity. As William Feaver wrote on Frank Au- erbach in 2009: ‘To Paint the same head over and over leads to unfamiliarity; eventually you get near the raw truth about it, just as people only blurt out the raw truth in the middle of a family quarrel.’ The same applies here. Hyams experimenting with all the formal features that painting has to offer (media, composition, form, technique, palette, tone, and light among them) is Hyams recording all he feels in response to his subject matter; it is Hyams getting nearer and nearer the ‘raw truth’. The pictures exhibited here have been selected from a significantly larger body of work; the artist and I believe that these are nearer the raw truth than any others.

- Freddie Foulkes