Featured Artist Terry Orletsky

Dreamlike landscape paintings by artist Terry Orletsky share the majesty of nature with dramatic contrast of earth and sky. See more by visiting his website.

 

 

Turner and Monet provide great inspiration. Their work glows with light and everything is infused with motion. They made landscapes relevant.

 

 

My work emulates them. Landscapes are fluid; skies threaten, clouds move, grain sways, trees rustle. A city scape is frenetic with abstract traffic. Mist rises and a path beckons one into the scene. The canvas is attacked with knife and brush and enthusiasm.

 

 

My paintings exude moods and motion, and the evolution of my art tends more and more to the knife and the richness of color. One collector said, “You are obviously not afraid of the canvas!” I resonate with that.

 

 

I started painting almost sixty years ago and always felt it was my calling. A long hiatus from the paintbrush for career and family was interrupted by a visit to inspirational Italy. I completed almost one hundred works in the following year.

 

 

I now live in San Diego, next to the sea. My roots are in the prairies of Alberta and the mountains of the Canadian Rockies. I paint what I know from where I have been in my long life.

 

 

My love of great literature leads me to explore the archetypal themes of man vs. nature, of fate vs. free will. Nature overwhelms us. One reviewer said, “Your works are metaphysical. There is a mystery of life in them, of becoming and existence, and affirming the existence of God, all accoutered in a special atmosphere…”

 

 

Many of my paintings hint of man; a road or a pathway, a collection of farm buildings. My painting of the ghost town of Bodie has the work of man being reabsorbed into the fabric of nature. The lone trees on the Saskatchewan landscape overshadow the vast expanse of the prairie of grain planted by the farmer.

 

 

The thunderstorm overpowers the homestead. A critic wrote “…vibrant, bold…and electric! One can feel the heat and sense the ozone in the air.”

 

 

My art is special to me. It is fulfillment on another level, akin to producing great music. But the music is transitory. My art is permanent. There is deep satisfaction in the finished work. Recent recognition by juries, critics and collectors is very gratifying. It has taken a lifetime. It is worth it.

 

 

I invite you in.

 

Artist Terry Orletsky invites you to follow his on Facebook.

 

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