Being a staunch follower of Pablo Picasso, we can see glance of his paintings in the work of Norman J Brodeur. He was inspired from his work and got an opportunity to learn from him. Norman became well known and his audience was curious to study his new work and feel his creativity. As he realized that his audience is waiting to see his work and subjects with a demonstrable prior existence expanded. In addition to popular icons, Norman chose images that he identified in interviews as things he had seen. Throughout his career, Norman has included in most of his art certain marks and shapes that clearly display their derivation from factual, unimagined things in the world, including handprints and footprints, casts of parts of the body, or stamps made from objects found in his studio.

There was a time, when Norman was going through a tough time. It was a bad period for his life. After remaining in pain for over a year his wife died from cancer. It was a time when Norman was totally broken and his career was affected too. For over a year he stayed away from the society and organizations of artists. It took a long time to come back to his work, but the work he did after this duration established him as a strong artist. His feelings, emotions and pain could be seen in his art work. His paintings showed his love for his wife. There is a painting showing his wife lying on a bed and this painting received appraisals from all over the world. In this painting he has shown the pain his wife went through. Many artist of his time said that Norman was broken completely that time and all his art work showed pain.