Andrew Orr – Master of Landscapes

Summer Stillness (16” x 24”)

By David Masello

A Bright Day in Autumn (9” x 12”)

Andrew Orr spends much time with his subjects before committing them to a gesso- or oil-primed panel. While the painter of landscapes might initially be captivated by a stand of trees reflected in a river or clouds hitting a mountain or the circuitous path a dirt road takes into an autumnal forest, he often pauses before rendering his interpretations in oil paints. It is likely that there is no American artist better than Orr at rendering landscapes with both the precision and poetry for which he has become renowned. Upon taking in an Orr landscape, many depicting his part of far northern Vermont (the Canadian border is two miles from his 12-acre property), a kind of drama unfolds for the viewer.

“I often try to figure out, consciously or subconsciously, if there is a story in what I’m showing of the land,” says Orr, from his barn studio, situated a short stroll from his circa-1850 farmhouse. “I try to get the viewer to think, ‘What’s happened in this spot? Has something gone on here before I’m seeing this?’”

End of Day, Cadillac Mountain, Acadia
National Park (24” x 30”)

Given Orr’s uncanny ability to render the precise details of nature—light on a submerged river rock, a bare twig on an otherwise bountiful maple, the mica glint veining a boulder—a viewer of his paintings is content to linger and try to answer some of the very questions Orr hopes to pose. When Orr began painting decades ago, he admits to having done “a lot of still life-ing,” but, now he  is content only with subject matter that never stays still—nature. “More often, I can be found in a spot where the scene is always changing and evolving. It’s about my watching a scene and how it evolves, how the light and shadows change, because nature is always changing.”

Orr’s painterly process is a complicated one, and it varies work to work. His daily routine might include what he calls a combination of “easel time and sketching time or drawing time, the laying out of the painting, planning the color schemes.” He “unashamedly” uses photographs to help capture natural scenes while wandering his land and those of neighbors. He tries to have five hours of painting a day, which he admits might simply include sitting in a field and watching and listening to nature’s movements. “I look at the landscapes as visual poetry. Just as a writer gathers words to beautifully create a story or express thoughts and feelings, nature does the same thing, only visually. That’s what catches my attention.”

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