My work of oil painting abstractions continues to explore the reflection of the natural environment. The light and color of the Northwest keeps me tethered to a suggestion of landscape and emotional interscape. Fractal shards reference experience and sense of place.
The homesteads on the eastern steps of the Central Washington Cascades where I was raised, and the fishing villages along the Lower Columbia River attempt to tether my work in landscape while my approach is made by free association of intuitive mark making, or automatism. I stretch further from the literal reference and deeper into abstraction. It's the process of pigment manipulation, aesthetic chess, and exploration carving out composition.
My rapid fire action painting can become as fast as a boxing match and slow as a series of multiple chess games played simultaneously.
Darren Orange lives in Astoria Oregon at the convergence of the formidable Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. "The Graveyard Of The Pacific" Here millions of metric tons of water and energy pass by creating its own ecological bio-region and an ever-changing atmospheric weather event. He has lived here since 2000 after meeting two friends at Western Washington University. The 3 set off to collectively move to this very remote area of the Lower Columbia. Here they rented a defunct schoolhouse and painted long days for a year sharing ideas and inspiration from the area.
In 2004 Darren left the Pacific Northwest for the sublime desert plains of the Southwest. While living in Santa Fe New Mexico he worked at Shidoni a bronze foundry of national fame and continued to paint and exhibit in Santa Fe.
In 2006 he returned to Astoria with a renewed drive to paint full time while the sublime horizons of the west rule his muse. Perhaps this amusement of the grandeur of nature is from early experiences of big weather, tales from his father surviving multiple tornadoes, and the trauma of being very young and surviving the Mt. Saint Helens eruption. A JMW Turner fan that needs no mast to tie to.
Darren Orange's work is recognized throughout the Northwest and abroad. He has been presented awards from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Ford Family Foundation, and the Ucross Foundation Residency Fellowship. His work has been selected for exhibitions by Dominic Iocono of the Syracuse University Art Galleries 2014, Michael Klein of the Microsoft Collection 2003, Nat Trottman of the Guggenheim 2011, Susan Coliton of the Paul G. Allen Collection 2006, Bonnie Laing Malcolmson of the Portland Art Museum 2013, Margarette Bullock of the Tacoma Art Museum 2008, and The Museum Of Americas 2011. Academic institutions such as Portland State University, Mt. Hood Community College, Peninsula College, Lower Columbia College, and Oregon Coast Council for the arts, have awarded him with solo exhibitions.
Today Darren's paintings are in notable collections across the country, Canada, England, Sweden, U.A.E. and Istanbul, including actor/director Ron Howard, Pulitzer Prize author H.G. Bissinger, NYU Consultant L.C. Smith, Western Oregon University, the Luzerne Music Center, Clatsop Community College, Northwest Natural Co, and the Columbia Memorial Hospital Foundation. His works have been published in books, radio and tv interviews, book covers, independent film posters, album covers, and national magazines such as 1859 Magazine, Art LTD, and Conde Nast Traveler.
"Darren Orange is an artist of the American West. The wild sea and earth are branded deeply into the flesh of Orange’s soul and canvases. His work is riveted in place, but unmoored in time.
Orange is a 21st-century painter in a 19th-century skin: the J.M.W. Turner of his generation. Modernity meets tradition here. Orange’s atmospheric landscapes and seascapes, for which he is best known, are weighted down by heavy paints and tar, but leavened by the artist’s use of light and color. His treatment of environmental and human degradation – in paintings, collages, and bronzes – is defined by an unblinking fierceness. He is a relentless, driven and exacting observer of our age, of Nature, and of our impact on Nature. The resulting work is monumental, enduring, and of outstanding significance."
L.C. Smith
Collector
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
“Excellently-conceived, meaty, gritty abstraction.”
Ethan Karp
Assoc, Director
OK Harris Gallery
NYC
"Darren Orange's intensely painted abstractions-part Anselm Kiefer and part 19th century romanticism-are so incandescent that at times they appear to be coming to three dimensional life."
D.K. Row
Oregonian
