
Megan Dowsett is a creative consultant working in museums, galleries and the arts, an illustrator who is finding her voice through personal and local projects, and a parent to two young beings who can't help but influence her creative journey.
Through the name Norris and the Flamingo, she shares the sense of adventure that runs through all of life, wherever we are on our journey. A sense of imagination, of possibility and discovery, for children and adults alike.

30 December 2011
20 December 2011
Cracker-Fest

It's been a serious cracker-fest this year. We've made Christmas Crackers with four Art Clubs, Santa's children, and finally I managed to bring crafts through the doors of Bishopsgate Institute, as we got the volunteers making crackers at their Christmas Party, suitably supported by wine ...
17 December 2011
A Felted Advent Calendar
![IMG_3577[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7162/6462031827_8171127be3.jpg)
12 December 2011
Collograph Christmas Cards
![IMG_3510[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6462045919_bf070f1473.jpg)
9 December 2011
Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven

But these guys were amazing. They did something right in capturing the ethereal wildness and ‘otherness’ of extreme wild places. It was the boldness of colour that somehow never lost their realism. The bravery of painting one piece almost entirely in pink and mauve, without it ever looking feminine or delicate – merely evocative of the mysterious sunsets you find when surrounded by water and mountains (see above: Evening, Canoe Lake, 1915-16). And the contrast that I have long loved in some of Kandinsky’s ‘Murnau’ paintings – of very, very dark against deeply rich colours. Managing, somehow, not to look false, but to capture my favourite moments of sunshine, in September as the sun lowers and the shadows become long, and the grass reaches and impossible shade of green.

I’ve not worked much with landscapes, and this is something I’ve struggled with since my trip to South America, where the landscapes hosted my most profound experiences. Group of Seven challenged me to open my paintbox and try again, revisit my sketches and my photographs, tackle those colours and take them further …
5 December 2011
Bassie's Signature

Bassie is a member of Octagon Club, the Orleans House group for teenagers with disabilities. Every time I meet him, I am mesmerised by Bassie’s artistic intelligence. He reminds me once again of the purely contrived boundaries between ‘professional’ and ‘naïve’ art, as he intuitively applies ideas and concepts to his projects that career artists might think of using as identifying features for making a name in their own work.
![IMG_3518[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/6462053423_da9eaa8c8d.jpg)
In this case, Bassie eats a bakewell tart each week during the break. And after the break, he finds a way to include the foil case of the tart in his work, making it an intrinsically distinctive, original ‘Bassie’ master.
During my recent collograph project, therefore, Bassie cut up his wrapper and added it to the complex and dynamic collage he had already created. Here, you can see the original collage alongside the prints which he took from it.
2 December 2011
Return to Dulwich

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