Norman Hyams 'Knowledge'

“Norman told me that when he was in his first year at Turps on the Aylesbury estate that he found it hard to continue here, coming from a place of security and privilege and now faced with a poverty and wretchedness. But he did continue and he realised that it put him in touch with a certain kind of reality he was running away from. He began to discover the humanity in his surroundings. It was then his work started to evolve meaningfully. It did not reflect his surroundings directly or, strangely, the same century but suddenly these melancholic but intimate characters began to populate the shadows of his paintings”
Marcus Harvey on Norman Hyams