Destanne Norris

Destanne Norris’ recent paintings emerge from more than three decades of sustained engagement with landscape, while marking a shift in how she articulates her place within it. After years of painting the land, Destanne is discovering how to make visible a longstanding interest in the space where landscape and inner life meet - where memory, embodiment, uncertainty and change are carried by the painted image.

The human figure is returning to Destanne’s landscapes, a presence that has appeared at important points throughout her practice and has become increasingly central to her recent work. The figure is not simply a witness to landscape, but a participant within it. At times small and vulnerable, at others, almost absorbed by the terrain, the figure embodies our desire to find belonging in the natural world alongside the recognition that the world itself is changing.

These paintings reflect a willingness to move between observation and imagination. Colour, gesture, abstraction and heightened atmosphere increasingly interrupt the conventions of traditional landscape painting. The land becomes less a subject to depict than a place through which psychological and emotional states can be explored.

At 66, Destanne sees her practice not as a conclusion but as an opening. The years of looking, painting, teaching, exhibiting and living with landscape have given her a rich visual vocabulary, while this current body of work allows her to question, disrupt and extend it.

For Destanne, sustained practice means continuing to risk change, remain curious and responsive, and stay fully engaged with the possibilities of painting.

Destanne Norris is a visual artist based in Vernon, British Columbia, with three decades of professional experience in painting and drawing. Her practice has evolved through a sustained engagement with landscape, memory, place and the relationship between the external world and inner experience.

Norris holds a BFA (Honours) in Painting and Drawing from the University of Victoria (1987) and an MFA by Research from the University of Tasmania, Australia (2009), where her thesis, painted pools: a lens into subjectivity, investigated water as a metaphor for life and pools not only a repository for water, but for memory, experience and consciousness.

Her work has been exhibited in public, commercial and artist-run galleries and museums across Canada and internationally since 1996. Recent exhibitions include the 2026 New English Art Club Annual Exhibition at Mall Galleries, London; In the Homeland: Karl May’s Ore Mountains at Karl May Haus, Germany; and the Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed at the Orillia Museum of Art and History, Ontario where her exhibited painting was subsequently acquired for the permanent collection.

Norris has also worked as an arts facilitator and educator, delivering workshops, presentations and speaking engagements, and served as the manager of Cardiff Miller Art Warehouse for two years. Her publications include the artist book TWENTY 8 DAYS (2025) and Leah’s Gift: A Story about Reframing Loss (2020). Her work is held in private, corporate and public collections and has been featured in exhibition publications and the documentary film Beneath the Painted Surface.