Orpin, Jen

Associate Member

Biography

Jen Orpin graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996 with a degree in Fine Art. She lives in Manchester and joined Rogue Artists’ Studios in 2000. As well as exhibiting UK wide and selling her paintings nationally and internationally, her work has been accepted into several Open Art exhibitions. Amongst these are the long list for the Jackson’s Open Painting Prize, New Light Art Prize, The ING discerning Eye Exhibition, The Wells Art Contemporary, The Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival, Bankley Open, Contemporary Six Gallery Open call and the first and second HOME Exhibitions where she was shortlisted on both occasions. She’s also exhibited in galleries in Bolton, Norfolk, Doncaster, Sheffield, Walsall and Liverpool and London.

In 2018 she appeared on Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year where the judges chose her in their top three for the heat. She regularly shows with Saul Hay Fine Art and her paintings have appeared in two publications in conjunction with the Modernist Society, a project called Landscapes of Post War Infrastructure with a ten-week solo show at the Manchester Modernist Society and their 10 year anniversary publication. In May 2021 her motorway paintings were featured in the Guardian online and the Grid section of the Observer’s New Review arts and culture magazine.  

Statement

I am a contemporary landscape painter and over the past 4 years my work has been a response to the themes around the journeys we make, the open road, liminal spaces, landmarks, memories, and nostalgia. These themes are portrayed in my paintings as empty motorways, landmarks and bridges. Also, more recently, the romanticism of capturing the fading light at dusk, driving at night and how car headlights impact the landscape it illuminates.

The familiar topographies of well travelled routes can form a major role in sparking these memories and nostalgia. This, combined with the confinements of the car that often offers an intimate confessional space can remind us of the things that matter, have made an impact on us and never fail to show us where we’re up too and and how much further we have to go.