The Boston-based painter’s large, color-rich paintings begin with what he hears, not with what he sees. He says, “Sight and sound run parallel in our perception, and these works do not intend to confound the two. Rather, the interest is for the viewer to switch back and forth across subjectivity, allowing sound its visual memory. As a word becomes a sound’s visual placeholder, so these paintings become their portrait.”

Norfolk began painting as a teenager and earned a BFA from the College of William and Mary, and received his MFA from Boston University.