Ken Orton is a figurative painter. Born in Birmingham, England, he moved to New York in 1993 and now lives in Roxbury in the Catskill Mountains 130 miles north of New York City. His work can be found in a number of prestigious galleries throughout the USA. He also shows his work at premier Fine Art festivals around the world. His work includes portraiture, landscape and his exquisite ‘Light Preserved’ still-life series.  

Orton uses glass bottles to represent buildings, the paintings invite the eye to meander through various glass objects, the shadows of valley of glass.

"I often, in my teaching, use glass bottles to represent buildings in the teaching of landscape. I look through a family of jars that sit on my kitchen table. The view never looks the same twice. The jars always seem to capture the weather, they seem to capture the mood. There is always a new knot of light twisted fibres burrowing into the shadows".

"A simple composition with the excitement coming from dynamic tonality and gentle refraction. The aged glass reshapes and re-colours the background. It would be remiss of me not to pay homage to Steve Smulka.  Though I have painted glass throughout my teaching career, it was on seeing Steve's work for the first time that I saw the enormous potential for these larger strident images. I bow at Steve's feet and would recommend everyone to search out the work of this extraordinary painter".

"The jars act as lenses bending and reshaping light, they magnify and distort objects and surfaces that can be seen through them. They interact with one another and what at first appears to be repetitive mass-produced industrial shapes becomes an endless mirage with an infinite variety of line, shapes, colours and tones."