My recent 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 pictorial reference and suggestion to landscape. These newer works press beyond my earlier representational, site-specific paintings that have been exhibited publicly for nearly two decades. The homesteads on the eastern steps of the Central Washington Cascades where I was raised, and the fishing villages along the Lower Columbia River where I live are marked by architectural ruins and footprints in history which become reoccurring narratives as they’ve been imprinted and moored into my being.
This new approach to my work is made by free association of intuitive mark making, or automatism. I stretch further from the literal reference and deeper into abstraction. This is the growth I've experienced over the last several years. It’s been a successful attempt to make the work of painting fun again by play. It's the process of pigment manipulation, aesthetic chess, and exploration carving out composition.
I work in large blocks of time, often weeks without interruption. I begin two-dozen or more panels and canvases at a time. As works come to a more complete state the game may slow, waiting for “the move” other canvases may take the attention and back and forth. My rapid fire painting style can sometimes become as fast as a boxing match and slow to a series of chess games. This allows me to think quickly on my feet and make bold committed moves without fear in trying to preserve the precious single painting or series of successful marks.
"There’s a reason Darren Orange’s grim, grimy paintings look as if they were fished out of a junkyard: They were. The Astoria artist frequents landfills in search of discarded building materials, half-used glue canisters, tars, shellacs and other various goos, all of which he then uses as media for his startling works on panel. Orange intends his abstracted landscapes as critiques of environmental toxification but whatever their conceptual aims, the works stand on their own as sensualist statements, owning the small Lovelake Gallery space with pure expressionist drama. With their rusty, organic color palette, their dump-born media smearing and dripping, and their coagulated gunk and burlap chunks protruding from the panel plane with topographic ambition, these fantasias of secretionary funk capture chthonian decay in a net of Apollonian ruthlessness. Like Marlow steaming his way up the Congo or spelunkers penetrating the darkness with their helmet-mounted lights, Orange is probing the quicksand with a steel pole. He will never hit bottom, and he knows it. His preference for earth tones and found media anchors him in the slimy muck-fuck of pollutive decay, far from the gleam and buff of our fashionable post-minimalism. No doubt, his sophisticated technique, which revels in surface effects, would yield more emphatic results in bolder hues and cleaner materials, but Orange isn’t interested in immaculate exclamation points; he prefers the fatalistic ellipsis. This is not Ellsworth Kelly-this is the corpse of Ed Kienholtz rising from the grave to impregnate Lucinda Parker, conceiving an unholy spawn that is far from pretty, yet somehow perversely brilliant."
Richard Speer
Williamette Week
April 2004
CV/BIO
EDUCATION:
Western Washington University. B.A. Fine Arts 1999
Ucross Foundation Residency Fellow 2023, 2013
RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2023
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2021
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2019
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2017
Cascadian Slipstream, Astoria Or. 2015
Lower Columbia College 2015
Orange On Blue, Astoria Or. 2015
PUB Gallery Peninsula College 2013
OCCA. Newport Oregon 2012
Columbia Bank Portland OR. August 2010
Terraqueous, Astoria OR. June 2010
Riversea Gallery Astoria OR. August 2007
Lunar Boy Gallery Astoria OR. April 2006
Shidoni Gallery Santa Fe NM. June 2005
Alderbrook Station Astoria OR. Sept. 2004
Lovelake Gallery Portland OR. April 2004
Fire Place Gallery, Mt. Hood Community College Gresham OR. May 2003
AWARDS:
Oregon Governor's Office Exhibition 2019
Ucross Residency Award 2013
Ford Family Foundation Residency Grant Award 2013
Oregon Arts Commission Opportunity Grant 2009
Au Naturel, Purchase Award, Clatsop Community College. Astoria Or. 2008
Cascade Aids Project, Live Auction Catalog. Curator Michael Klein. Portland OR. May 2003
RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Waterstreet Gallery Douglas MI. 2018
Ucross Foundation. 16 Oregon Artists. Ucross Wy. 2017
OPB Art Beat group exhibition. Peoples Gallery Portland Or. 2014
Graeter Art Gallery, Portland Or. 2012
Mark Wooley Gallery, Portland Or. April 2012
200 Years of Astoria Artists Clatsop County Heritage Museum 2011
Beaverton Arts Commission 29th Art Showcase 2011
Launch Pad Gallery Portland 2010
12x16 Gallery Portland OR. 2009
Prints for Pica Monothon, Portland Or. 2008
"Originally From" Allied Arts Yakima WA.Oct 07
Crows Shadow Institute Monothon Nov. 2007
War Images, Clatsop Community College Oct. 2006
Simon Edwards Gallery, Yakima WA. May 2004
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta Georgia. April 2004
“Art For Life” Cascade Aids Project, Portland OR. April 2004
Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica CA. Dec. 2003
“Art For Life” Cascade Aids Project, Portland OR. May 2003
“Next Now” Littman Gallery, P.S.U. Portland OR. April 2003
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Cannon Beach OR. April 2003
RECENT JURIED EXHIBITIONS:
MONA Biennial 2017 Museum of Non-visible Art
Less is More, Mitchell Gallery, St. Johns College. Juror Domic Iocono of the Syracuse University Art Gallery. 2014
Around Oregon Annual, The Art Center, Corvallis OR. 2013 Juror Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson.
Industry and Art Working Waterfront Coalition. 2012 Portland Or. Juror Elizabeth Leach
Portland Open Studio Tour 2012. Juror Martha Lee, Russo Gallery
Photo Craft National Competition. Lightbox Gallery Astoria Oregon.
Museum of the Americas Miami Fl. 2011
Open Wide 2, BWAC Brooklyn NY Juror Nat Trottman curator Guggenhiem Museum 2011
Expressions West, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay Oregon. 2011
10x10 Juried exhibition Tieton WA. Greg Kucera, Gail Gibson,
2010 Oregon Arts Commission Opportunity Grant Award 2009
Oregon State Fair, Salem OR. 2009
Au Naturel International Figurative Show, Juror Rick Bartow, 2009
Au Naturel Clatsop Community College, Juror Margaret Bullock, Tacoma Art Museum 2008
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Juror Jennifer Gately, Portland Art Museum August 2007
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Juror Marnie Stark. Portland Art Museum. Feb. 2007
Allied Arts Gallery, Juror Susan Coliton, of Paul G Allen Foundation. Yakima WA. Aug.2006
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Juror Charles Froelick. Cannon Beach OR. May 2006
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery. Juror Stuart Horodner, Cannon Beach OR. March 2004
Allied Arts Gallery, Curator Michael Klein (Microsoft Collection) Yakima WA. 2003
Cascade Aids Project, Live Auction Catalog. Curator Michael Klein. Portland OR. May 2003
PUBLISHED ARTICLES:
Ucross Djerassi, Oregon Artists At Work. Ford Family Foundation Catalog
International Contemporary Artists volume XII 2017
Studio Visit Magazine 2017
Oregon Public Broadcasting Radio “State of Wonder” Dec 5 2015
Oregon Public Broadcasting Radio “State of Wonder” June 2015
Rain Magazine 2015
Willamette Week Feb 4th 2015
Our Coast Magazine 2014
OPB Radio “State of Wonder”April 19th 2014
Oregon Public Broadcasting Art Beat #1515, 2014
KBOO, Art Talk Nov. 5th 2013
Northwest News Network July 25th 2013
1859 Magazine, Oregon’s Creative Impact March 2013
Oregon Coast Council For The Arts video documentary of Darren Orange studio work. 2012
Art LTD Magazine 2011
Rain Magazine 2011
“At Waters Edge” Adam Carlsen, Donald Masterson
Willamette Week by Richard Speer April 7th 2004 Portland OR.
The Oregonian, Beyond the Pearl. D.K. Row April 2003
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Guest Lecture, Art Commission Clatsop County summit 2019
Guest Lecture, Rotatarians Of The Pearl, Portland Or. 2019
Live painting Astoria Music Festival 2018
Album cover for the band Holiday Friends 2017
Live painting Astoria Music Festival 2016
Liberty Theater Board Of Directors 2016.
Astoria Visual Arts Board of Directors 2015
Album cover for Sergey Antonov, Cellist. Boston Mass.
OPB State of Wonder panel discussion Astoria Or. 2015
Oregon Arts Commission panel discussion, Astoria, Or. 2015
Oregon Public Broadcasting in studio live painting 2015
Movie poster, “What’s Your Pleasure” 2014
Album cover, Holiday Friends, Northwest Recording Artists. 2014
Book cover, “Kilned Again” P. Mattson McDonald. 2014
Peninsula College Guest Speaker 2013
Cannon Beach Photo Review 2012 with Jim Leisy, Portland Art Museum Board Member
Clatsop Community College recruitment guest speaker 2011
Oregon Arts Commission Opportunity Grant 2009
Crow Shadow Institute Workshop 2006
Shidoni Gallery and Foundry associate 2005
Site Santa Fe Volunteer 2005
COLLECTIONS:
Northwest Natural Gas corporate collection
Western Oregon University, Monmouth Or.
Robert Adams, photographer MacArthur fellow
Ron Howard, Actor/Producer. Ct.
Sergey Antonov, Cellist. Boston Mass.
Ceren Aksan, International Award Winning Violinist. Istanbul Turkey
Lindi Ortega, CCMA, Roots Artist Of The Year Award. International Recording Artist. Calgary Ca.
H.G Bissenger Pulitzer Prize Winning Author. Philadelphia, Pa.
Luzerne Music Center, Elizabeth Pitcairn, The Red Violin owner. NY.
Columbia Memorial Hospital Astoria Or.
Clatsop Community College Astoria Or.
Tri Met Portland Or.
Local Oceans Seafood. Newport Or.
Salt hotel. Ilawco Wa.
GALLERY REPRESENTATION:
Imogen
Astoria Or.
imogengallery.com/
[email protected]
503-298-8519
This new approach to my work is made by free association of intuitive mark making, or automatism. I stretch further from the literal reference and deeper into abstraction. This is the growth I've experienced over the last several years. It’s been a successful attempt to make the work of painting fun again by play. It's the process of pigment manipulation, aesthetic chess, and exploration carving out composition.
I work in large blocks of time, often weeks without interruption. I begin two-dozen or more panels and canvases at a time. As works come to a more complete state the game may slow, waiting for “the move” other canvases may take the attention and back and forth. My rapid fire painting style can sometimes become as fast as a boxing match and slow to a series of chess games. This allows me to think quickly on my feet and make bold committed moves without fear in trying to preserve the precious single painting or series of successful marks.
"There’s a reason Darren Orange’s grim, grimy paintings look as if they were fished out of a junkyard: They were. The Astoria artist frequents landfills in search of discarded building materials, half-used glue canisters, tars, shellacs and other various goos, all of which he then uses as media for his startling works on panel. Orange intends his abstracted landscapes as critiques of environmental toxification but whatever their conceptual aims, the works stand on their own as sensualist statements, owning the small Lovelake Gallery space with pure expressionist drama. With their rusty, organic color palette, their dump-born media smearing and dripping, and their coagulated gunk and burlap chunks protruding from the panel plane with topographic ambition, these fantasias of secretionary funk capture chthonian decay in a net of Apollonian ruthlessness. Like Marlow steaming his way up the Congo or spelunkers penetrating the darkness with their helmet-mounted lights, Orange is probing the quicksand with a steel pole. He will never hit bottom, and he knows it. His preference for earth tones and found media anchors him in the slimy muck-fuck of pollutive decay, far from the gleam and buff of our fashionable post-minimalism. No doubt, his sophisticated technique, which revels in surface effects, would yield more emphatic results in bolder hues and cleaner materials, but Orange isn’t interested in immaculate exclamation points; he prefers the fatalistic ellipsis. This is not Ellsworth Kelly-this is the corpse of Ed Kienholtz rising from the grave to impregnate Lucinda Parker, conceiving an unholy spawn that is far from pretty, yet somehow perversely brilliant."
Richard Speer
Williamette Week
April 2004
CV/BIO
EDUCATION:
Western Washington University. B.A. Fine Arts 1999
Ucross Foundation Residency Fellow 2023, 2013
RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2023
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2021
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2019
Imogen Gallery, Astoria Or. 2017
Cascadian Slipstream, Astoria Or. 2015
Lower Columbia College 2015
Orange On Blue, Astoria Or. 2015
PUB Gallery Peninsula College 2013
OCCA. Newport Oregon 2012
Columbia Bank Portland OR. August 2010
Terraqueous, Astoria OR. June 2010
Riversea Gallery Astoria OR. August 2007
Lunar Boy Gallery Astoria OR. April 2006
Shidoni Gallery Santa Fe NM. June 2005
Alderbrook Station Astoria OR. Sept. 2004
Lovelake Gallery Portland OR. April 2004
Fire Place Gallery, Mt. Hood Community College Gresham OR. May 2003
AWARDS:
Oregon Governor's Office Exhibition 2019
Ucross Residency Award 2013
Ford Family Foundation Residency Grant Award 2013
Oregon Arts Commission Opportunity Grant 2009
Au Naturel, Purchase Award, Clatsop Community College. Astoria Or. 2008
Cascade Aids Project, Live Auction Catalog. Curator Michael Klein. Portland OR. May 2003
RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Waterstreet Gallery Douglas MI. 2018
Ucross Foundation. 16 Oregon Artists. Ucross Wy. 2017
OPB Art Beat group exhibition. Peoples Gallery Portland Or. 2014
Graeter Art Gallery, Portland Or. 2012
Mark Wooley Gallery, Portland Or. April 2012
200 Years of Astoria Artists Clatsop County Heritage Museum 2011
Beaverton Arts Commission 29th Art Showcase 2011
Launch Pad Gallery Portland 2010
12x16 Gallery Portland OR. 2009
Prints for Pica Monothon, Portland Or. 2008
"Originally From" Allied Arts Yakima WA.Oct 07
Crows Shadow Institute Monothon Nov. 2007
War Images, Clatsop Community College Oct. 2006
Simon Edwards Gallery, Yakima WA. May 2004
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta Georgia. April 2004
“Art For Life” Cascade Aids Project, Portland OR. April 2004
Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica CA. Dec. 2003
“Art For Life” Cascade Aids Project, Portland OR. May 2003
“Next Now” Littman Gallery, P.S.U. Portland OR. April 2003
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Cannon Beach OR. April 2003
RECENT JURIED EXHIBITIONS:
MONA Biennial 2017 Museum of Non-visible Art
Less is More, Mitchell Gallery, St. Johns College. Juror Domic Iocono of the Syracuse University Art Gallery. 2014
Around Oregon Annual, The Art Center, Corvallis OR. 2013 Juror Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson.
Industry and Art Working Waterfront Coalition. 2012 Portland Or. Juror Elizabeth Leach
Portland Open Studio Tour 2012. Juror Martha Lee, Russo Gallery
Photo Craft National Competition. Lightbox Gallery Astoria Oregon.
Museum of the Americas Miami Fl. 2011
Open Wide 2, BWAC Brooklyn NY Juror Nat Trottman curator Guggenhiem Museum 2011
Expressions West, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay Oregon. 2011
10x10 Juried exhibition Tieton WA. Greg Kucera, Gail Gibson,
2010 Oregon Arts Commission Opportunity Grant Award 2009
Oregon State Fair, Salem OR. 2009
Au Naturel International Figurative Show, Juror Rick Bartow, 2009
Au Naturel Clatsop Community College, Juror Margaret Bullock, Tacoma Art Museum 2008
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Juror Jennifer Gately, Portland Art Museum August 2007
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Juror Marnie Stark. Portland Art Museum. Feb. 2007
Allied Arts Gallery, Juror Susan Coliton, of Paul G Allen Foundation. Yakima WA. Aug.2006
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery, Juror Charles Froelick. Cannon Beach OR. May 2006
Cannon Beach Arts Gallery. Juror Stuart Horodner, Cannon Beach OR. March 2004
Allied Arts Gallery, Curator Michael Klein (Microsoft Collection) Yakima WA. 2003
Cascade Aids Project, Live Auction Catalog. Curator Michael Klein. Portland OR. May 2003
PUBLISHED ARTICLES:
Ucross Djerassi, Oregon Artists At Work. Ford Family Foundation Catalog
International Contemporary Artists volume XII 2017
Studio Visit Magazine 2017
Oregon Public Broadcasting Radio “State of Wonder” Dec 5 2015
Oregon Public Broadcasting Radio “State of Wonder” June 2015
Rain Magazine 2015
Willamette Week Feb 4th 2015
Our Coast Magazine 2014
OPB Radio “State of Wonder”April 19th 2014
Oregon Public Broadcasting Art Beat #1515, 2014
KBOO, Art Talk Nov. 5th 2013
Northwest News Network July 25th 2013
1859 Magazine, Oregon’s Creative Impact March 2013
Oregon Coast Council For The Arts video documentary of Darren Orange studio work. 2012
Art LTD Magazine 2011
Rain Magazine 2011
“At Waters Edge” Adam Carlsen, Donald Masterson
Willamette Week by Richard Speer April 7th 2004 Portland OR.
The Oregonian, Beyond the Pearl. D.K. Row April 2003
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Guest Lecture, Art Commission Clatsop County summit 2019
Guest Lecture, Rotatarians Of The Pearl, Portland Or. 2019
Live painting Astoria Music Festival 2018
Album cover for the band Holiday Friends 2017
Live painting Astoria Music Festival 2016
Liberty Theater Board Of Directors 2016.
Astoria Visual Arts Board of Directors 2015
Album cover for Sergey Antonov, Cellist. Boston Mass.
OPB State of Wonder panel discussion Astoria Or. 2015
Oregon Arts Commission panel discussion, Astoria, Or. 2015
Oregon Public Broadcasting in studio live painting 2015
Movie poster, “What’s Your Pleasure” 2014
Album cover, Holiday Friends, Northwest Recording Artists. 2014
Book cover, “Kilned Again” P. Mattson McDonald. 2014
Peninsula College Guest Speaker 2013
Cannon Beach Photo Review 2012 with Jim Leisy, Portland Art Museum Board Member
Clatsop Community College recruitment guest speaker 2011
Oregon Arts Commission Opportunity Grant 2009
Crow Shadow Institute Workshop 2006
Shidoni Gallery and Foundry associate 2005
Site Santa Fe Volunteer 2005
COLLECTIONS:
Northwest Natural Gas corporate collection
Western Oregon University, Monmouth Or.
Robert Adams, photographer MacArthur fellow
Ron Howard, Actor/Producer. Ct.
Sergey Antonov, Cellist. Boston Mass.
Ceren Aksan, International Award Winning Violinist. Istanbul Turkey
Lindi Ortega, CCMA, Roots Artist Of The Year Award. International Recording Artist. Calgary Ca.
H.G Bissenger Pulitzer Prize Winning Author. Philadelphia, Pa.
Luzerne Music Center, Elizabeth Pitcairn, The Red Violin owner. NY.
Columbia Memorial Hospital Astoria Or.
Clatsop Community College Astoria Or.
Tri Met Portland Or.
Local Oceans Seafood. Newport Or.
Salt hotel. Ilawco Wa.
GALLERY REPRESENTATION:
Imogen
Astoria Or.
imogengallery.com/
[email protected]
503-298-8519
