A Norm Yip canvas tends to begin in turbulence and end somewhere quieter. His paintings move between abstract expressionism and a more recent, geometric stillness, recording an internal state more than an external scene, a habit traceable to the moment he left a career as an architect in 1999, an decision he describes as difficult, but driven by a need to work with his hands.
Even as his work has darkened in subject, taking in protest, loss, and the death of his father, it remains, by his own account, committed to beauty, a value many contemporary artists have abandoned.
He works primarily in acrylic and pastel pencil, building dense layered surfaces through bold, gestural brushwork that has shifted, in his most recent Elemental series, toward more spacious, geometric abstraction influenced by his return to the Canadian prairies and a first encounter with the aurora borealis.
Norm holds a BA cum laude from the University of Saskatchewan and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Toronto. He co-founded the Meli-Melo Artists Alliance in Hong Kong in 1999, and has exhibited in Hong Kong, New York, Bangkok, and Zurich.
He divides his time between Saskatchewan and Hong Kong.
