“When you look at my paintings, you feel you are in a wonderland,” says Norma Akkelian, 71. A portion of proceeds from sales at her exhibition, titled Pays des merveilles, will go to the Shield of Athena.
By Susan Schwartz • Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: Sep 02, 2022
Artist Norma Akkelian with her work on display at Galérie Erga in Montreal on Wednesday, August 31, 2022. Some of the proceeds from the show will go to Shield of Athena Family Services and Armenian Family Support Services.
When artist Norma Akkelian starts work on a painting, she doesn’t have a specific subject in mind.
“I just put the colours together,” she said in an interview this week as she prepared for her first solo exhibition at 71.
“I might make a leaf and put gold on it and it builds itself up slowly. I move from one texture, one design, to the other.
“I work in an impressionistic world; I interpret my art through a very story-like medium.”
Although this will be Akkelian’s first solo show, in some ways she has been working toward it for a lifetime.
Her first career was as a jewelry designer and then, about 30 years ago, when her children were young, she took up decorative painting.
(Two of Akkelian’s children are in the jewelry business today; they run a sister company to her husband’s. Son Bedros is a mentalist, better known to fans as Spidey.)
As a decorative painter, Akkelian often worked with antique pieces such as staircase newels and fashioned them into candlesticks by hand-painting them and decorating them with elements including gold leaf.
“I used to sell them at an annual show held by Montreal-area decorative painters,” she recalled. “I would paint 40 candlesticks — and they would be gone in five hours.”
But after a dozen years, “I said, ‘Enough. Let’s move on.’ I’m the kind of person who needs to grow constantly.”
Akkelian then moved to the canvas. She took classes in such subjects as drawing and colour theory and “slowly, I developed my own style.”
“My canvases are very elaborate, very dreamlike,” she said.
Her experience in jewelry design is sometimes evident in her use of such elements as gold leaf and Swarovski crystals.
“There is a lot going on, but the works are very cohesive.”
Akkelian is inspired by nature.
“I do a lot of flowers — but my flowers are symbolic,” she said. “When you look at my paintings, you feel you are in a wonderland.”
She has participated in group art shows in Montreal and Miami, where she spends a few winter months, and her reputation spread through word of mouth and, more recently, social media: She has more than 47,000 followers on Instagram (@norma.akkelian) and devotes time daily to engaging with them. Her work is in private and corporate collections in North America and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic kept Akkelian at home, as it did so many. And as she assembled a few dozen paintings in her Montreal home studio, she decided to have a solo exhibition.
“I said, ‘Let me put it out there.”
Her show, which started Wednesday at Galérie Erga, a rental gallery in Little Italy, runs through Sunday.
She plans to give a portion of proceeds from sales to the Shield of Athena, which helps women and children affected by family violence, and to Armenian Family Support Services. She will also donate a painting to a silent auction to benefit the Shield of Athena.
All along, Akkelian has used her talent for charitable endeavours, including decorative painting on walls at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and the Kirkland municipal library and as a contributing artist at the Shield of Athena annual art auction.
She said she was brought up “to be fair in life, to be decent and to care for others. If you saw someone in need of help, you helped.”
“I have a gift and, if I am going to use it, I want to use it to give back,” Akkelian said. “If everyone helped a little, wouldn’t it be a better world?”
