I witnessed Orion’s shamanic masterpiece, Sfear, in an old bank building at Cannibal Flower about six years ago. Since then we’ve worked closely together, bouncing ideas of the infinite and indulging our shared fondness for myth, the sublime and the horrific. His work is awe-inspiring and in my mind is a priceless Los Angeles treasure. It is deeply structured, filled with poetic metaphor, and executed with the mind and craft of a master.
Meet Orion:
Nathan Cartwright: Where do you find the vast imagery in your work?
Orion: Many times the images come from dreams or subconscious states or just by accidental circumstance. Sometimes, random birds will fall out of the sky and hit my head, making me see stars and visions. Other times, I may be inspired to see something in the back of my mind, some vague apparition of an idea or energy. Like an explorer in a cave, I explore this vastness…expand upon mysterious intuition.
Nathan Cartwright: So tell me, where is your favorite place to journey to in the vastness of Orionland?
Orion: My favorite place to go to is through the Doorway of Imagination towards the shadow of Infinity—a childlike, naive, yet dark & magical place where anything goes!
Nathan Cartwright: What part does sacred geometry play in your art?
Orion: Sacred geometry is one of nature’s secrets and since I am greatly inspired by nature, I often imitate her habits. To me, it expresses absolute perfection or numerical harmony.
Nathan Cartwright: What is your philosophyon the buying and selling of artwork?
Orion: It would be to not sell myself short. In other words, not to sell something until it may be truly finished.
Nathan Cartwright: Explain how your masterpiece was started and why is it never finished?
Orion: This one masterpiece entitled SFEAR was started as a visual grand unified theory or else as an attempt to be able to see everything at once. Seven years and counting, it is an intense layering of many ideas which I called SFEAR (sphere + fear= sfear) Composed of three panels, it measures twelve feet wide, eight feet high mostly painted in watercolor. It has not been completed so that I may perpetually reformulate my thoughts—although I’d like to see it done in 2012.
Nathan Cartwright: Hmmm . . . that’s a date the Mayans like to talk about. What do you plan on showing Los Angeles at The Hive on October 6th?
Orion: The painting series I will exhibit at The Hive describes a journey—a poetic visual novel composed over 33 paintings left in a perpetual state of organic progression painted with L.A, tap & rainwater. It is a thesis on infinite & eternal vision; a hypothetical itch for curious scratch seekers; a manifesto of sacred geometric compositional terrorism; a cookbook for nihilistic endeavored flavors seeking spicy questions that are moot; an ecstatic interior landscape state summoning lucid vision; a showdown between two contradictions- breathing & not breathing; a shy rebellion against the machine eye in which life is the key; a new ambiguous language that never repeats itself; a silent musical composition consisting of the following ingredients: Red = E, Blue = D, Yellow = G etc.; a conceptual theatre of the absurd & the cruelty starring Black as Chaos, White as Reason, Grey as Union; a meeting between day and night; an astronomical pornographic enigma as meant for the twilight light.”
Come have your mind blown by Orion’s work, opening October 6th, 8-12:30AM thru the 28th. In addition, Lindsay Riley and an arsenal of artists will be exhibiting black light art in the middle and installation areas of The Hive!! To see Orion’s work online check: www.sfear.org