About the Artist
Norah Chow is a visual artist based in Vancouver, Canada. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she developed a practice grounded in painting and visual exploration.
Her work has been exhibited in a range of contexts, including the Emily Carr University of Art + Design Grad Show and the 2024 Music & Art Show at Gateway Theatre in Richmond. Selected paintings were featured during a Canada Y.C. Folk Music orchestral performance, reflecting an interdisciplinary presentation of visual art and live music.
Norah has also received recognition through the CreART Canadian Painting and Design Competition for Children and Youth, where she was awarded the Excellence Award in Character Design. Her practice continues to evolve through exhibition-based projects and an ongoing exploration of abstract visual language.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice centers on the tension between chaos and calm. Moments of fantasy and disappointment, self-awareness and separation, form the point of departure for my paintings. They remind me that emotional turbulence and the collapse of reason are inseparable parts of being human. When I paint, I am not fleeing from chaos but learning to coexist with it—allowing emotion to be seen through color, and reason to regenerate through fragmentation.
In this process, color ceases to be a mere surface; it becomes an energy field, a language of the soul. The interplay of brightness and depth, of saturation and stillness, mirrors the resonance between order and freedom within me. Each hue breathes with its own rhythm—carrying traces of unease, hope, and renewal.
The lines and forms in my work arise from intuitive bodily movement. They twist, mend, and regenerate like consciousness reshaping itself through growth. For me, abstraction is both a visual exploration and a spiritual extension—a way for reason and emotion, self and world, to negotiate balance within a shared space.
I am drawn to the dialogue between gazing and being gazed at, and to the fragile coexistence of body and spirit. These encounters remind me that while I am being seen, I am also seeing; while I seek to understand the world, the world, too, reflects its understanding back to me.