Husband Alan Shayne
Norman
Sunshine (born 1935) began as an illustrator for the entertainment industry and the New York Times, eventually moving into advertising, where he authored some of the most recognizable campaigns of the 1970s. He quickly drew acclaim as a painter of southern California’s soft geometry and quiet loneliness. After moving back to the East Coast, his practice expanded: sometimes through distinctively experimental, Cezanne-like still-lifes, sometimes capturing the austerity of the New England winter, but always developing a visual language equally attuned to the psychological and physical spaces he inhabited.
Norman Sunshine, born in Los Angeles, attended the University of Southern California, New York University, and the Art Center School in Los Angeles. He embarked on a fine arts career that has resulted in major shows in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as in international galleries and exhibitions. In addition to several private collections, his work is held by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Columbia, North Carolina, the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut, The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs, California.
Sunshine met his future husband Alan Shayne in New York in 1958. “We didn’t want to live together,”
said Shayne. “We didn’t have any examples of what a good love
relationship between two men could be. And there was always the problem
of hiding so no one would know we were gay.” In 2011, just before that
year's Emmy Awards, artist Norman Sunshine wrote an article for the New
York Times recounting his experience of being nominated for and winning
an Emmy for designing the title sequence for Addie and the King of
Hearts. Sunshine, who was the longtime romantic partner of then-Warner
Brothers Television president Alan Shayne, said in the article that he
struggled with whether or not he should take Shayne with him as his Emmy
date. He finally decided instead to take a female friend for the sake of
social propriety, and he later regretted that decision.
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