In this new body of work, Orrin Whalen turns inward, revisiting personal histories and archived works as a way of uncovering unresolved ideas and overlooked visual narratives. Through an intricate and labor-intensive process, Whalen creates large-scale paint skins built from layered painterly techniques before dissecting them into latex fragments. Drawing inspiration from photographs of daily life, the artist’s garden, and travels abroad, the works incorporate color palettes and textures influenced by weathered surfaces, patinated objects, and naturally aged environments. These fragments are then intuitively collaged into expansive compositions that suggest aerial landscapes, branching forms, and fleeting moments from the natural world, subtly reconnecting the works to the original places and memories from which they emerged. Balancing chance with deliberate construction, Whalen approaches each composition as both excavation and reconstruction — assembling painterly remnants into larger emotional and visual narratives. The resulting works explore memory, transformation, and the layered relationship between abstraction, place, and lived experience.
