"Old growth forest is to the lover of wilderness what a farm, in the hands of a family for many generations, is to me. The ideal farmland is one of broad regions, diversely cultivated, where the powers of nature and human needs harmoniously converge. It is this ideal that I choose to paint. After painting Washington County NY for nearly 30 years, I realize how few new vantage points of the ideal show themselves to me, and how many I have known no longer exist."

Born in New York State, Harry Orlyk is a plein air landscape painter who received his B.S. at the State University of New York and his M.F.A. at the University of Nebraska. Orlyk is the recipient of the Woods and Guggenheim Fellowship awards and has exhibited in many solo and group shows throughout the United States, including the Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY, the B. Beamesderfer Gallery, Highland Park, NJ, Chaparral Fine Art, Bozeman, MT, Tatistcheff & Co, NY, and Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA.

The passionate attachment and attention to the land is visible in every stroke of Orlyk’s brush; the fact that he does not just want to paint but that he needs to paint is also visible. “Maybe I paint,” the artist goes on to say, “because of a need to notice places of soul healing common ground or maybe it is only self therapy, going out, not too far from home, to find a place of solace, defining the experience in paint, and going home a happy man.”

“I return to these places, I paint, when the seasons or weather moves them the way I am moved by these things. That is why I paint the land every day. That is why I will paint it for as long as I can.”

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