The paintings of Joseph Orr will be featured at Red Piano Art Gallery this month in a celebration of the artist’s more than 20-year relationship with the gallery.
“We were a much smaller gallery up on Orleans Road when we first saw the work of Joseph Orr,” said Ben Whiteside, owner with his wife, Lyn, of the gallery. “A kind of odd-looking, generic package arrived by mail, filled with small artworks, mostly landscapes, all by some artist named Joseph Orr. They were just outstanding, but we had no idea who he was or how in the world these paintings ended up at our gallery.”
Whiteside said he reached out to Orr, then living in Missouri, and after a few minutes of nonstop conversation, had developed a plan in which Orr would provide additional paintings and visit the Lowcountry to meet the folks at Red Piano. And discover Hilton Head.
“As an artist, a painter of landscapes, arriving on Hilton Head Island was just an enormous gift,” said Orr. “Everything about the setting thrilled me, and I was ready to take in this amazing Lowcountry first hand.”
There are close to a dozen Orr pieces hanging throughout the Red Piano. His richly imagined and dramatically portrayed landscapes are done on canvas or Masonite and created in his medium of choice, acrylic.
My favorite piece is “In Front of the Sunset.” Consider the movement Orr communicates through his portrayal of the subtle motion captured in the waterway, the ripples in the water, the motion of the seagrasses and the reflection of the sun on the water.
Source: Island Packet
