
James Orvik
January 23 – March 28, 2025
Opening reception Thursday, January 23 from 6 to 8 pm
Artist Statement
I never seem to take a walk without contemplating what it would take to paint what I’m seeing. I depend on nature to compose itself, but it doesn’t always work out that way. When it does, I’m filled with gratitude. But that’s only the beginning. Although nature can be generous, it is also fugitive; here now then gone. So there’s a reason my work sometimes looks photographic, because it is. Photographs are an approximation of what nature presents, and a painting using those photographs is yet a further approximation, one in which fugitive nature has been reluctantly pinned down. My goal in the work
you see here is for you to feel as though you were there with me and to enjoy it as much as I did, at that moment, on that day.
I also have a strong impulse toward invention and experimentation, displayed here in a series of paintings exploiting a technique I call “botanical decollage”. In this technique, botanical material is first collaged on to the surface as a resist and finally decollaged to reveal whatever was originally underpainted but with the unique botanical contours intact. What is common to both kinds of art I present here is that nature is preserved. But as with any art form, they also express the artist’s methods and limitations. I’m grateful that “nature” lets me borrow a little bit of itself from time to time.