Landscape Paintings by HARRY ORLYK
September 1 - 30
Artist’s Reception: Saturday, 9/1, 2-5 pm
Gallery Hours: Sat 11-6, Sun 11-5, and By Appointment
Once again, Enderlin Gallery will be featuring Harry Orlyk’s Landscape Paintings through the month of September. A painter who paints everyday from his van, Harry speaks of the relationship of his work to nature; “A quarter century of painting has been an act of the imagination to determine who and what I am with respect to the earth and sky. Process, rather than product oriented, searching for the daily painting, has become a way of living in relationship with the earth. To become a human being, a part of nature rather than someone separate observing it from the outside, like hunter-gatherers, I am led from one opportunity to the next, being directed by seasonal stages. The relationship has become the trust I give it to show me where my next painting will be. Each painting entails facing a swath of creation and observing something of its story, becomes a long log of small truths.”
 |
| Harry Orlyk Orchard in Sunlight Oil on linen 30 x 42 inches |
For Harry Orlyk, the day is his model. But in his case, the model can't come back tomorrow. “Sitting in the cold in a traditional way, I paint what is before me, sometimes as still as the Eskimo who earns his family's meal by waiting and watching and thinking. He kills an animal; I make an image. We are linked together by our years of long studied views across a common land. I am so cold sometimes with the windows of my black Dodge van rolled up tight. (I never turn on the engine once parked to paint, afraid of carbon monoxide.) In a cold-induced trance, painting continues all by itself. Often the final dim presence of light exits while both hands are still at work and I do not know what I have made until the painting is brought into the light of a room.”
Harry
Orlyk was born in Troy, New York in 1947. In 1971 after graduating from SUNY
New Paltz, he went on to graduate school at the University of Nebraska at
Lincoln where he received his MFA in 1974. Over the next nine years, he was
influenced by several Nebraskan artists. "Still-life painter Robin
Smith taught me how to use paint without turpentine - to paint from the tube." He
also admits the influence of photographer Lawrence McFarland who taught him
what spiritual space was, and how to emphasize it. Lastly he credits well-known
Lincoln painter Keith Jacobshagen with having impressed on him the importance
of routine. He currently resides with his family in Salem, New York, near
the Vermont border. Harry Orlyk is the recipient of a 1974 Woods Fellowship
and a 1995 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
An Artist’s Reception will be held at Enderlin Gallery on Saturday, September
the first from 2 – 5 pm. All are invited to partake in food, wine, and
good company while savoring Orlyk’s impressive works. Also on exhibit is
the collection of paintings, ceramics, sculpture, photography, furniture, jewelry,
drawings and prints featured in our main gallery downstairs. Harry Orlyk’s
work will be on display from September 1-30.
Enderlin Gallery’s hours are Saturday from 11-6 and Sunday from 11
to 5, 11-5 on Holiday Mondays and by appointment. For more information please
visit our website: http://www.enderlingallery.com or contact Director, Roshan
Houshmand at 607-326-3200 or roshan@enderlingallery.com.