Nora Morgan Fitzsimons
Artist – Teacher – Dreamer
An early reader with an inquisitive nature, she was encouraged to pursue art by a young art mistress at the age of 11 and later received a scholarship to study at Liverpool John Moore University where she graduated with a BA (Hons). After moving to France in the early 1960s with her husband who was stationed at SHAPE, she fell in love with the architecture of the palace at Versailles and the beautiful woods at Fontainebleau. At 21, painted at the Place de Tetre and her work was displayed alongside other artist on the banks of the Seine.
Teacher
After moving back to England, Nora worked as a teacher and eventually became Head of Special Needs, working to pioneer teaching methods, diagnostics, and resources for dyslexia. She took pride in teaching children with behavioural issues that had been ignored by the system and turning their outlooks around.
Nora also taught English as another language. Many children she taught who arrived in the UK during the 1970s still remembered how much impact she had on them years later and would often stop her in the street to tell her so.
Her husband gave her a pet name, an ironic inside joke based on the Taming of the Shrew, and it stuck. She became known as Kate and used this pen name for aa time during the 1970s and early1980s. Her works under this name include two collections of ink line drawings featuring now historic images of Peterborough.
After her youngest child was born, Nora took early retirement from teaching due to disability. She worked as an artist and illustrator, becoming an artist in residence at Burghley House and her paintings hung on the walls of ambassadors, princesses and kings.
Moving back up North in the mid 1980s, she took a job as an artist for Cheshire Wildlife, illustrating the animals and wildflowers that had always fascinated her and exhibiting her work in galleries.
Although she also worked using the pen names Elen Morgan and Kate Gore, she is most well known for her continued and consistent work under the name Morgan Fitzsimons.
Community Work
Nora was passionate about education, arts, and culture and always wanted to support underrepresented voices. A woman who pioneered in education and entered spaces that were traditionally reserved for men, she navigated her early carer with grit and determination.
She has been a trustee, artist, educator, and mentor for many charities, churches, and organisations over the years and more recently served as Deputy CEO of Peterborough charity, Compas, between 2019 and 2021.
Making many friends across different communities, championing women, and learning new traditions, she balanced her love of heritage and her Irish and Welsh roots with the joy of understanding others.