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



 

“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 life.”


Dk. Row

Oregonian

                                                                   

                                                                    

                                                            

   

  

   Darren's work is charged with both meteorological and emotional intensity. 

With a pallet that crosses between natural observation and emotional sensation, his work pushes out the boundaries of our present awareness and into the past, the Age of Reason, when European culture made contact with this remarkable corner of the world. J.M.W. Turner was a contemporary of Lewis and Clark.  Collectively they witnessed and documented through sketch the rapidly evolving development of the natural world. They were full of awestruck wonder at the cauldron of romantic dread and a near metaphysical quasi-poetic rapture as their awareness grew.  Darren's work

continues in a present day context to tap into this powerful mix of visual and visceral components, to produce his own personal expression with paint, vision, and geography.  Touching upon economic, political, and ecological issues- the work occasionally allows the artist to use the river and the sea as a mirror image of our collective dysfunction and greedy "gimmie" aspects of the present state.

   We still struggle to come to terms with our relationship in the natural world and the sense of place that permeates our lives. Rather than a prosaic approach to all of this, his work is a restless and relentless quest to find the here and now.


Bill Ittman

Art Historian/Collector

Cannon Beach Oregon