Norajean Ferris

Interview with Katie Bonadies, May 2026

Pictured: RWS member and visual artist Norajean Ferris. Photos courtesy of the artist.

Visual artist Norajean Ferris creates oil paintings and layered drawings done in pencil, pen, marker, charcoal and ink. Her work depicts social and political issues, cityscapes, landscapes, abstraction, animals and portraiture. In February of this year Ferris completed her first residency. The work that she created at Vermont Studio Center (VSC) will be part of her upcoming solo exhibition at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI) in June. Ferris was previously featured in the April 2022 Running With Scissors newsletter.

The VSC program is a renowned international artists’ and writers’ residency in Johnson, Vermont. For the two-and-a-half-week duration of the residency, Ferris worked in the Wolf Kahn studio, named after the famous painter who taught there. During her stay, Ferris met artists from Argentina, Russia, India, China, Canada, Peru, and throughout the U.S. She spent six to nine hours in the studio each day, walked along the winter trails, and socialized in the dining hall where, she says, “We ate like royalty.” 

The residency was the first time Ferris used only marker, pencil, and ink without pastel. This made her creative process less stressful and allowed her to focus on her work in a more concentrated way. Ferris completed four works from start to finish while in residence. “It was very immersive. I had time to expand and home in on creating work that will be part of my show at UMPI.” The work she focused on was about the heightened political tensions with ICE in the city of Portland and other communities in the U.S. 

Her upcoming exhibition at UMPI is a rallying cry. Titled “Global Scream: Voices Within Oppression”, the show addresses universal issues in America and beyond: immigration rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, gender rights, gun violence, climate change, issues of inclusion in sports, as well as the current global wars involving America, Palestine, and Ukraine. “It’s basically a whole zeitgeist about the human condition in the present day. It’s about the complexities of issues that are far too relevant in our modern world.” She wants audiences to quietly gain perspective about the world and come away with conversations about how to make it new. Her hope is that it will inspire people to fight for what’s right, to take action that will lead to lasting change.

Winter Olympic Games 2026: Malin ICE Protest. (Italian and English.) 2026. | Acts of Kindness. 45in x 60in. (Somali, Sudanese, Spanish, French, and English.) 2026.

Oil paintings and pastel drawings from Ferris’s early days at RWS will be in the show alongside her new drawings from her time at VSC. The pieces will range in size from 14x17” to 72x96”. The paintings are more specific politically, conceptually, and aesthetically than past works. Ferris uses more detail in her figure design, and the work has evolved to include speech bubbles, different languages, and translations. This has pushed forward her knowledge of how to integrate these elements harmoniously on canvas. 

This will be Ferris’ fifth solo show, and it is a continuation of her deep commitment to depicting the human condition. Her first solo show, “People, Places, and Patterns”, was held in 2015 when she was a senior at Green Mountain College in Vermont. Her first political show “Into the Nation” was held at Portland Media Center, followed by “This  Energy of Mine”, a show of abstract work at the same venue. Her most recent show, “America: Behind the Mask of Utopia”, was held at the Pejepscot History Center (PHC) in Brunswick, Maine where she made history as the first contemporary artist to show their work at the museum. “Until I displayed ‘Behind the Mask,’ PHC did not hold any semblance of cultural diversities. Viewers walked up the stairs to the second floor and saw all this colorful new art. It was a shock to the senses in that historical setting.”

Indigenous ICE protest: 2026. Pencil, Marker and Ink. 60in x 45in.

In past juried exhibitions, Ferris has shown her political work at The Center of Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine, the University of New Hampshire’s Museum of Art, and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in Yarmouth, Massachusetts. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ferris and Titi de Baccarat–a fellow artist and friend of Ferris from Gabon–teamed up and showed examples of their individual work in a joint exhibition at 82Parris in Portland (then, New System Laundry) called “The Mix: A look into American Diversity”. 

The layouts of Ferris’s compositions have developed to resemble comic book panels and graphic novels. This form is an idea that has been in the back of her mind since she read her first graphic novel, Maus by Art Spiegelman. “[The form is] accessible and connects with both younger and older generations, an accomplishment that I strive to achieve with my own work. It speaks on the realities of emotional, mental, and psychological trauma, rendered beautiful in the art of comics.” After reading more works in this format, she realized she had been making panels in her artwork subconsciously. It became obsessively fun for Ferris, and she thought, “This could be the start of something.” 

Contact Norajean Ferris via email at nj@norajeanferris.com and through her website, www.norajeanferris.com.