Norman Teeling
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Norman Teeling is a painter with a romantic impressionist style and a passion for painting En Plein Air. Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1944, it was there where his tutors included Maurice MacGonigal PPRHA (1900–1979), Carey Clarke PPRHA, and John KellyRHA (1932–2006), and where he earned a Degree in Art and his teaching credential from the National College of Art and Design. After twelve years of teaching Art at several Dublin colleges, Norman Teeling took a hiatus from the profession to pursue his creative drive in the Animation industry.
Teeling worked as a background artist on two feature films with Don Bluth Studios. Experience also came as a background artist for Fred Wolf Films, producer of many successful TV series including Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles known asTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the USA Zorro and The Fantastic Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. Teeling traveled to Norway in 1996 to develop his first animated feature film, Gurin with the Foxtail. Work was also produced for several animation studios in Germany and Italy. Additional work has appeared on RTÉ, the Irish state TV broadcaster, and his creation Fearless Film was produced for Children's Television, Dublin.
The Artist, experimenting in varied mediums, created a cartoon strip that was published over a six-year period by The Irish Press (defunct) and his illustrations also appeared in Sunday World. Norman Teeling has also completed set designs for Gate Theatre and Tivoli Theatre in Dublin. Further, he has published two books of cartoons Irish Brew and Sloth. His latest literary opus is Norman Teeling Paints The Irish Landscape In Oils, an En Plein Air teaching and reference work, with a preface bySunny Apinchapong-Yang.
Norman Teeling's monumental ten painting suite, The 1916 Rising, hung on display in the General Post Office, Dublin. Acquired by An Post in 1998, the oils depict events surrounding the Easter Rising, perhaps the most significant societal event in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798.
A romantic painter, his human subject, usually a solitary female, graceful and elegant, seems also fragile and vulnerable. Often sensually depicted in sunlit rooms, they have about them an air of expectation and yearning and they seem devoid of any smugness. There is a vibrancy of colour and a confident energy in the brushwork.