Catherine Orrok
Catherine Orrok · Source: New York Artists Circle · Rights retained by the original rights holders
- Medium
- Acrylic Paint, Gouache, Pencil/Colored Pencil
- Based in
- Brooklyn studio
- Practice
- Collage, Drawing, Painting, Works on Paper
Catherine Orrok received an MFA in painting from Hunter College in 1982. She subsequently was represented by the Yvonne Rapp Gallery in Louisville, KY, until 1990. In addition to her art background, Orrok is a certified … Full biography
Biography
Catherine Orrok received an MFA in painting from Hunter College in 1982. She subsequently was represented by the Yvonne Rapp Gallery in Louisville, KY, until 1990. In addition to her art background, Orrok is a certified horticulturist. Beginning in 1998, she started a garden design business and divided her time between painting and garden design until closing the business in 2015. She has maintained a studio in Brooklyn for the last 35 years.
More recently, Orrok has joined the 440 Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, where she had a solo show in 2024. Since 2022, her work has been in several group shows at 440 Gallery, and in 2024, she participated in a group show at EP.Contemporary in Berlin, Germany. Other recent venues include the Catskill Art Society in Livingston Manor, NY, and the SJC Brooklyn Arts Council.
Artist statement
My work begins with an inquiry; I want to understand why we are engaged in this thing called art in the first place. I have come to believe that ultimately, it is a system of ordering we use to make sense of this world through our perceptions.
I have chosen geometric abstraction as the mode for my explorations, as its meaning is baked into the basic structure of the work, with no symbolism or narrative. I am dealing with paint and the surface I place it on. That gives me form, the method of application, and color as the tools for my examination.
The grid is the underpinning for the forms I use, and is a most basic structure, but it is undermined by the process of painting with evident brush marks and drips. I am influenced by quilts and old gameboards, artifacts that are also handmade with a defined underlying structure. I try to build space intuitively, so I must be open to what my senses are telling me rather than what my intellect says should happen. This means discovering the painting through the process of making it. It means being completely attentive to the dialogue I am having with the painting in front of me.
I keep coming back to a quote from the critic Peter Schjeldahl about Mondrian, "The experience of art was inseparable from a willingness to be dumbfounded, to be reduced to not knowing, to just experiencing." There may never be an answer to my inquery, but what it comes down to is that perception is a creative act, and the primary source of information about our place in the world.
