Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Charlotte Healey

NORM!

NORM! as its title suggests, is a bar scene. Drunk, passed out, depressed, and generally not enjoying themselves, these figures are the dregs who are still around at last call. They do what we wish to do, but without joy – what a waste! The bartender (like KILROY in Why the Long Table?) is the witness and overseer. To their left a dog stands on its hind legs and tries to get their attention, but is seemingly ignored. A figure(s) stands in the kitchen, which we only know from the oddly shaped shadow falling across the bright tiles at the back of the place. This piece pulls most intensely from the nostalgia I experience over the small basement pub I used to work. The circular tables, bright kitchen light cutting through the dark, and the general malaise of staff and patrons all are rendered with the hand of memory. Nicole hunches over a figure face-down on a bench as if to startle them with a, “You can’t sleep here!” - though most of these people are on the cusp of unconsciousness, if not already there. In the dank, drinking below street level, life continues extraneous to and a direct result of the outside world.