Jen Orpin
Attractions Ahead
Oil on cradled board
13 x 18cm
Copyright The Artist
Orpin’s current practice focuses on one of the fundamental elements of human relationships, connection. This connection can manifest itself emotionally, spiritually, and physically. The latter requires us to come together,...
Orpin’s current practice focuses on one of the fundamental elements of human relationships, connection. This connection can manifest itself emotionally, spiritually, and physically. The latter requires us to come together, meet, see, and touch each other. This cannot happen without one crucial act, the journey that takes us to them. This, in the most part is achieved by various means and modes of transport. The one the artist focuses on and has been investigating throughout their painting practice is the journey by car and the relationship we have with the motorway and its landmarks. These visual representations of everyday topographies and the framed view from the car make up and form the basis of memories and nostalgia. The importance of these external landscapes is often mirrored by the internal dialogue of the driver and passenger with the confinements of the car at times offering an intimate confessional space. The mundanity of these everyday actions often belies the truth of deep routed emotions that come with well-travelled routes to the people and places that mean the most to us.
In these paintings Orpin aims to portray this feeling, emotionalism is a key element in the success of each one and as a viewer you are forced to look down the road as its sole traveller and undertake each journey as your own. Each bridge or landmark acts as the sitter in the landscape’s portrait, confronting you head on, holding your gaze as your mind travels under and beyond its concrete confinements.