Biography
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Nano Nore was born in a small north-east Nebraska town in the early 1950’s into a Norwegian Lutheran family. After graduating from Albion High School she went to the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO and majored in painting with Stan Lewis and printmaking. It was also here that she took a ceramics course with Ken Ferguson and Jacquie Rice, and discovered another true love with sculptural clay.
Graduating in 1974 she began teaching high school art in the Kansas City Missouri school district, and working on a graduate degree in Ceramic Sculpture at Texas Woman’s University, Denton Texas. She got her MA degree there in 1976. She began a MARS degree at Central Seminary, Kansas City, KS with an emphasis on studying the relationships between art and religion and completed this degree in 1980. |
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Nano Nore took an offer of chairing the art department at Park University in 1980-84 when she went with her husband and child to England for 3 years. Upon returning to the United States she taught at Johnson County Community College for several years until she accepted a position teaching studio art and art history at William Jewell College in Liberty MO in 1988 where she is now a Professor of studio art and art history.
In 1990 Nano Nore earned her MFA from Texas Woman’s University in ceramic sculpture and art history. She has been named to Who’s Who among American Teachers 2004-05 and Who's Who in America 2006-07. Has had artwork in 40 or more group shows, and 14 one woman shows. She currently is sought after to judge art exhibitions, and to speak on topics of Christianity and the arts to art groups or congregations.
In 1990 Nano Nore earned her MFA from Texas Woman’s University in ceramic sculpture and art history. She has been named to Who’s Who among American Teachers 2004-05 and Who's Who in America 2006-07. Has had artwork in 40 or more group shows, and 14 one woman shows. She currently is sought after to judge art exhibitions, and to speak on topics of Christianity and the arts to art groups or congregations.
Artist Statement
My artwork has been influenced by expressionism since I was a student at the Kansas City Art Institute (1970-74) in the Studio of Stanley Lewis. His manic energy matched my own and I benefitted much from this mentor. I studied the figure there, but this study has not appeared in my work. Landscape has. I grew up In Northeast Nebraska in a small town surrounded by rolling hills, agriculture, and one creek. I felt most at home outside the city limits of Albion. I felt a passion fed by my farmer-rancher grandparents, for the land and it is this passion that has informed my work of the past 40 years. Increasingly over the years my work has grown more colorful, less representational. Lines, structure, balance inform my composition and are my essential gestalt onto which my color hangs. Of course there is a link to van Gogh but I do not use his painterly thick brush strokes. Fauve color, particularly that of the early work of Derain, has influenced me, but my love of Cezanne is even more influential. William Kentridge and I have an affinity in drawing styles, but I was doing his type of drawing since KCAI. Alex Katz’s flatness as well as the work by Diebenkorn in the Nelson Atkins have been influences. I love lines, moving, swirling, wiggling lines, and structural lines. The Graphic work of fellow Norwegian Edvard Munch, whose work I saw in 6th grade in Omaha NE at the Joselyn, made a big impression on me at the time. I was able to visit his museum in Oslo in 1998, viewing his graphic art he repeatedly worked and reworked around his major themes. His use of an active sky and outlines certainly on a subconscious level affected my use of line. But it is the Fauve work of Derain that influenced my line and color along with the color in landscapes of Schmidt-Rottloff seen in the Die Brucke museum in Berlin. Some have said that my art has an affinity with the graphic work of Rockwell Kent, but I was only aware of his work long after my series had been shown.
All of the work I have done is based on a locale, but could be anywhere in the viewer’s eye. Some find my use of red as being an “angry” color. It is not, from my point of view. As we said in Stanley’s studio, “Red next to green is the secret of painting.” Complimentary colors bring out the best of each color. I would call myself a Neo-expressionist. I mine the past to do work in the present. Yes, my work is a blending of all the artists mentioned, but it is not derivative of any. Over the years my work has gone from Energized representation to abstraction (Innvik series), but all is based on Landscape and my responses to it. Increasingly my work has gotten flatter.
I will paraphrase Roger Fry and say: Before it is a representation of any place, the design elements are the hinge on which everything else is based. So I start with my mind and end with my heart.
All of the work I have done is based on a locale, but could be anywhere in the viewer’s eye. Some find my use of red as being an “angry” color. It is not, from my point of view. As we said in Stanley’s studio, “Red next to green is the secret of painting.” Complimentary colors bring out the best of each color. I would call myself a Neo-expressionist. I mine the past to do work in the present. Yes, my work is a blending of all the artists mentioned, but it is not derivative of any. Over the years my work has gone from Energized representation to abstraction (Innvik series), but all is based on Landscape and my responses to it. Increasingly my work has gotten flatter.
I will paraphrase Roger Fry and say: Before it is a representation of any place, the design elements are the hinge on which everything else is based. So I start with my mind and end with my heart.
