The creations of artist, draughtsman, teacher and gallery owner Robin Norling, the exhibit reveals a lifetime of art experiments and changes in his art career.

Poet Les Murray conducted the official opening.

The work of Robin Norling is inspired by both figure and landscape.

He doesn't aim to replicate but enjoys reorganising the visual world in his art to achieve unity.

Carefully painting the nude was common practice up to the 1960s and the human body is still a constant theme and a challenge to him.

He enjoys relating shapes, colours, subtle alignments and hidden geometry in his work.

Born in Windsor, New South Wales in 1939, Robin grew up in Taree and went on to study at the National Art School, Sydney Teachers College and the Royal College of Art in London.

At 22, while still a student at the Sydney Teacher's College he won the Sulman Prize for a mural design.

The following year, after he had started teaching at Macquarie Boys High School, he was awarded the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship and saw him travel, with his new wife, to Europe and North Africa.

He continued to teach, both at a secondary and then tertiary level.

Robin also shared his love of the arts for four years through the weekly ABC program, Young World of Art.

He was senior education officer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1 978 to 1986 and went on to teach painting and drawing at the Meadowbank College of TAFE.

He retired in 1997 and started painting full-time.

Robin lives on the Central Coast and has a studio and gallery, called the Bakehouse Gallery, which he shares with artist Jocelyn Maughan.

Metamorphosis will be on show at Manning Regional Art Gallery until Sunday June 5.

The gallery is located in Macquarie Street, Taree, and is open from 10am to 4pm Wednesday to Saturday and 1pm to 4pm Sunday.