Splash of life
Norma Abbas’s career celebration show in Kuala Lumpur spills over with rich hues and lively imagery.
PUAN Sri Norma Abbas is perfectly capable of waxing lyrical about life and art. But today, while standing among some 70 works at Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery that make up her biggest and most comprehensive exhibition of her works ever, she talks about her cat.
“Angel Pooditat was with me for 15 years before passing away in June earlier this year. He’s more human than anyone I know – with cats, you know you have their love forever,” she shares.
But death is not the end for either of them, because Angel lives on in the many art pieces he is immortalised in.
“I will probably do more paintings of Angel, but for now, Special Bonding is the latest painting I did of him and I’ll be holding on to it for a while,” says Norma, 65, who considers her art an immensely personal reflection of her artistic pursuit and life journey.
A Colourful Journey To A Promise, spanning work created over the course of three decades and a bit, is a coded memoir presented in vibrant colours and gradations of abstraction, imagery and symbolism.
Inspired by relationships with family members, friends and feline companions, this exhibition, curated by Noreen Zulkepli and Siti Melorinda Khuzaina Sakdudin, captures personal vignettes of Norma’s life and incorporates her contemplation on a spiritual quest towards the ultimate “promise” in life.
“My experiences in life are all documented in my art. But these works are coded so people in different stages in their life will perceive them differently. My earlier works were semi-abstract, and over time, without me quite realising it, they have evolved to be more abstract,” she explains. Her work combines multiple techniques, including collage, printmaking, drawing and painting – mostly done up in vivid colours, but with the occasional black and white piece breaking up the chain of colour explosion, in particular from her earlier years.
Norma pursued her artistic studies at the Mara Institute of Technology (UiTM) in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, where she majored in printed textiles and fashion, before completing her bachelor degree in printed and woven textiles at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Art in Britain. In the 1980s, she did her masters in autographic printmaking at the Chelsea School of Art, also in Britain.
Clearly a huge fan of the art style that emerged during the early 20th-century avant-garde Cubism movement, Norma is drawn to the works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
“I like the form so much that I was inclined to be Picasso-ish,” she laughs. “But eventually I found my own way, my own style, so even though you do still see some resemblance to the Picasso works I like so much, I think you can call it the Norma Abbas style now!”
A Colourful Journey To A Promise marks her fifth solo exhibition in Malaysia. As a child, she recalls, she had always liked painting.
“As early as four or five years old, all I wanted to do was art. My ambition, even back then, was to be an artist. It was a childhood dream of mine that I have been living for a long time now,” she says.
Prior to pursuing a full-time artist career, Norma worked as a packaging designer.
“I was the in-house designer in a factory in Petaling Jaya, the head of department. It was there that I learned marketing, graphics, design ... all of which played a role in helping me find my direction as an artist,” she shares.
Her four-year stint as a designer also contributed in another way, in the form of a steady income that Norma spent a portion of each month on art supplies that she kept aside for the day she would break them out and start painting.
“I bought art materials with my salary each month, and just kept them for years. When I finally used them, I started with pastels and a lot of heavy paper collage. I have always liked working with mixed media, and over time, I incorporated canvas and acrylic into my art as well,” she says.
A Colourful Journey To A Promise co-curator Noreen comments in an essay, “Norma’s art is as engaging as she is, and as spontaneous. Thirty one years of experience and the vicissitudes of her life confirm that, as claimed by her mother, ‘she was born with a brush in her mouth and paints in her hands.’”
Noreen highlights that the exhibition is arranged in two main sections: “Proximity”, a testament to Norma’s passion, observations and experience with people around her and her surroundings, invokes happiness, sadness, fragility, perseverance, victory and loss; while “Promise”, extracted from her 99 Names Of Allah series, is an affirmation of faith and the love between man and God.
Together, the pieces come together to form a whole, but the journey and adventure is far from its finish line.
“My artworks are true expressions of my own inspiration, spirituality and reality. Love, peace and compassion flow through my heart and actions on to the canvas with absolute intent to cause other hearts to stir with passion and spreading consciousness to all like-minded souls all over the world. If art is true to the artist’s inner being, then this fact, above all, makes it meaningful,” says Norma.
Her quest for the meaning and purpose of life, just like her art, is an ongoing process that will stretch on for as long as she has a say in it.
“I am going to paint forever, just like Picasso!” she says.
It is a grand plan, indeed, which is where all great dreams start.