Baptism Painting

Felicita Norris works primarily in painting and photography. Her works begin as reactions to personal experiences, although the images and themes represented are not strictly autobiographical. Acting as a stage for figures and objects, her paintings, drawings and photos depict unsettling images that respond to social constructions, institutions and politics. In creating relatable narratives that simultaneously hide and reveal, her “self-indulgent” themes shift between the domestic to specific aspects of desire and longing. Norris is also inspired by dreams and pop culture, typically using interiors to re-create claustrophobic and psychologically disturbing motifs, continually referencing obsessive fantasies and dreams culturally associated with the feminine psyche; the self-induced pleasure that comes from the euphoria of desire, where self-control is simultaneously difficult, necessary and painful; examination of race is explored through the position and politics of “not being white enough.” Felicita received her MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University and a BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. Norris has been drawing and painting for more than 20 years and has recently exhibited in the Walter and McBean galleries and at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco. Norris was long-listed for the Aesthetica Magazine Art Prize and featured in the Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology, Future Now in 2018, and has exhibited her work internationally at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Leeds College of Art, the United Kingdom; Los Angeles; and San Francisco. She currently lives and works in the California Bay Area.