Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Fall 2016 | Page 20

Breaking it Down
How Paul Norwood ’81 went from lobsterman’s son to an ad
agency creative director and then walked away to a life as a
painter.
BY PATRICIA ERIKSON

Paul Norwood’s artist statement says that he’s “the son
of a lobsterman who would rather paint the sea than
fish from it.” But the work ethic and experiences from
his childhood led him into hard-workin g, big city ad
agencies reminiscent of the Mad Men world until the
day he walked away to pursue a lifelong dream: making
a living as a painter. Today, Norwood’s artwork hangs on
gallery walls in Massachusetts, Texas, South Carolina, and
California.
Norwood described growing up in Camp Ellis as a “Huck
Finn type of childhood” where he, and many of his
Thornton friends, worked in his father’s lobster pound
business. George Norwood ’48 ran the business with the
help of his wife, and their three sons. But Paul’s heart was
not centered on fishing. He said, “I started painting when
I was nine years-old. My older brother won an art contest
at a bank and came home with 50 silver dollars. I thought,
‘oh my God, that’s unbelievable. I can do that.’ That was
when I first picked up a brush and when I started learning
how business works.”
Norwood’s memories of Thornton are tinged with
learning in his freshman year that his father had been
diagnosed with a terminal illness, “My father’s dream
was to see his three sons go to college. He lived just long
enough to see that.” After attending UNH his freshman
year in college so that he could be close to his ailing
father, Norwood later transferred to Syracuse University

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and graduated with a BFA in Advertising Design.
Norwood said, “I credit Mrs. Thorndike, my guidance
counselor at Thornton, for pointing me toward Syracuse.
That’s how I ended up there. She was nearing the end
of her career, was a chain smoker with an almost scary,
gravelly voice. I was initially pretty intimidated by her, but
she turned out to be really knowledgeable and very nice...
she pointed me in the right direction.”
Syracuse provided Norwood with a tough, yet valuable,
introduction into the advertising industry. But the
program served him well, “I got a job right out of college
as an art director with a large agency in Boston: Cabot
Advertising. I was always interested in art. But I was a
realist and knew advertising was the next best thing as
a career. An art director works with the copywriter to
come up with ideas for print ads, billboards, TV ads,
etc. It was a very Mad Men sort of world. But it’s a crazy
fun business. You are paid to come up with ideas on a
timeline. There’s a lot of pressure. You train yourself to
think on demand. I was there for five years before it was
bought out by the national agency Arnold. After four
years at Foote Cone & Belding in San Francisco, I decided
in 1994 to start my own agency back in Boston. I started
the company with Ben Godley, a ‘summer kid’ from
Camp Ellis who was my best friend growing up. He still
is. For six years I worked as both founder and creative
director. By then it was a mid-size agency with clients like
Sheraton, Charles Schwab, and Reebok.”