Meet the Artist: Jen Orpin
Jen Orpin graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996 with a degree in Fine Art. She lives in Manchester and joined Rogue Artists’ Studios, Manchester in 2000. She is a full time professional practicing artist painting contemporary landscapes focusing on the often overlooked, liminal spaces and brutalist structures within the topographies of our everyday.
Your practice centres on connection, how did this manifest as painting motorways?
Connection is key to the success of the paintings with the subject matter playing a huge role in this. The bridges and roads I paint are triggers that spark memories of the important journeys we make. 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 every day actions often belies the truth of deep routed emotions that come with well-travelled routes and the connections to the people and places that mean the most to us.
Is there a car journey in your past which has influenced your practice?
In 2015 I made a car journey that was pivotal and the reason why I started painting the motorway bridges. My dad had a stroke and for three months every week twice a week I drove the same route from Manchester down to Surrey to be with him and my family at the ICU unit of the hospital he was in. We lost him just before Christmas of that year, three years later I started creating the work. Each bridge acted as a marker on my journey telling me where I was up to and how much further I had to go. As a result of my own personal journey, I feel emotionally connected to the subject matter which has become a fundamental element in the making of each painting.
Do you wish to change the legacy of what it means to be a landscape painter?
I think what it means to be a landscape painter has changed. The environment and urban surroundings that mean the most to us are often what we see every day. This isn’t always the bucolic British countryside and to a lot of people there is beauty to find in the everyday and mundane. With so many of our brutal buildings and structures being demolished and our urban landscapes changing so rapidly, there is also an element of social documentation with making landscape paintings of these environments. As far as painting the motorway bridges, I’ve painted well over 500 paintings of them, who knows how long these structures will be a part of the topography of our everyday landscapes and I don’t plan to stop painting them any time soon.
Whose creative practice has been inspiring you recently?
I’m very lucky to be surrounded by such a brilliant and inspiring group of artists. I’m part of a studio group called Rogue Artists’ Studios with around 80 artists under one roof and I also know and are friends with many artists, some of which are from several studio groups in and around the north. Their unwavering support and generosity is invaluable, being part of an art community is inspiring on so many different levels and has become a really important part of my everyday life as a full time practicing artist.
