Mytle Mary Norma Atcheson on 16 May 1917 in Shepparton, Victoria, the youngest of six children of a farming family at Caniambo in the Goulburn Valley. After leaving school she studied accounting at the Myer Department Store, Melbourne and completed degrees in arts and commerce from the University of Melbourne in 1956 and attended drawing classes at the National Gallery School. She travelled to England where she worked as a relief teacher. During her eighteen month stay in Europe she visited as many of the major art galleries as she could. In 1958 she married Angus Norrie, a mining engineer, moved to Brisbane to live. According to the conventions of the time it was inappropriate for her to work but now she had the opportunity to develop her interest in art. She immediately enrolled at the Central Technical College, Brisbane under Melville Haysom and studied until 1961. Subsequently she studied with more modern art teachers, Roy Churcher (especially), Bronwyn Yeates, Neville Matthews and Brian Hatch. She also attended residential painting schools at Armidale under Stanislaus Rapotec and at the vacation Schools at Queensland University which were promoted through Dr Gertrude Langer and the Arts Council.
Norrie continued to remain open to new experiences and studied etching at the College of Art, Brisbane under Nora Anson 1977-78 and printmaking later became a significant part of her production. She studied sculpture with Stephen Murray-Walker and with prominent local sculptors Len and Kath Shillam. Lastly, but in no way least, she studied the Japanese art of floral arrangement and became a master of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana.
Norrie has exhibited continuously since her first foray into prize competitions in 1959, more than forty years ago. During the 1960s the institution of the art prize burgeoned in Brisbane much as it did in the remainder of Australia. Mary began to exhibit in the local prizes such as the Redcliffe Art Contest, Warana-Caltex, The Royal National Association, the L. J. Harvey Prize for Drawing, the David Jones Art Prize, the H. C. Richards and Trustees’ Prize and the Gold Coast City Art Prize. She also exhibited frequently in other local and regional competitions at Alice Springs, Armidale, Bundaberg, Cloncurry, Dalby, Cairn, Grafton, Gympie, Innisfail, Lismore, Redlands Bay, Stanthorpe, Toowoomba and Townsville . . and others. The result of this enthusiastic participation is to be found in the 86 first and 33 second prizes she has been awarded over the years.
She began exhibiting with Royal Queensland Art Society in 1960 and made a fellow on 29 October 1996. She became a member of the Contemporary Art Society (Qld) and exhibited there for almost the full life of the Society, and the Society of Sculptors, Queensland, the Half Dozen Group of Artists and the Watercolour Society of Queensland amongst others.
Mary held solo exhibitions of her paintings at the Design Arts Centre, Brisbane 1971, the Martin Gallery, Townsville and the Italia Gallery, Brisbane 1975 and at the Linton Gallery, Toowoomba 1976, an exhibition of works on paper at the RQAS Gallery in 1986, and a joint exhibition with Joyce Hyam in 1994. The most significant was the survey exhibition 'Colour and shape’ which was held at the Logan Art Gallery, five years ago (1997).
Mary has consistently pursued her interest in pure abstraction and was always willing to participate in artistic activities. My first memory of her is in a fence painting competition for the redevelopment site of King George Square in 1967 of 1968. Even then it was pure colour that attracted her as she was using ferns dipped in bright blues, greens and yellows to build up an overall and essentially formless and tonal, composition — this same 'structureless’ format she used throughout her career.
Her explorations of colour especially evoke a strong emotional response. In Brisbane, during the late 1960s, Norrie was painting abstract work contemporary with the paintings in Sydney and Melbourne which was so acclaimed in 'The Field’ exhibition at the opening of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. Brisbane critic Dr Gertrude Langer in contemporary reviews recognised that Norrie’s work of the late 1960s-1970s was about colour for its own sake, the emotional resonance it afforded, and the integrity of the painted surface. Some of her compositions and their colours allude to landscape or seascape. 'Red square with stripes’ is an excellent example of Norrie’s painting of the period, depending as it does on the subtle gradations of colour. Roy Churcher awarded it a first prize in the Brookfield Show in 1972, and described it as:
A contained and finely balanced painting which is completely abstract in that it is not meant to look like anything except itself. It has a quiet musical quality, with a soft inner glow that makes it a painting of considerable dignity. (1)
The torn, leaf like shapes of works of the 1990s such as 'Autumn colour’ 1992 and 'Primitive form’ 1996, recall the style of David Aspden and this blending of colours was often to be found in her prints. But, apart from Irene Amos whose more organic form of abstraction is well known, the contribution of women to abstract art in Brisbane is largely unacknowledged. Amos recalled that the work of abstractionist members of the RQAS in the early 1960s were places in odd corners and corridors in the Society’s annual exhibitions. However, it can be stated quite that Mary was the major exponent of colour-field abstraction in Brisbane
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
- Writers:
- Cooke, Glenn R.
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2011
