Jen Orpin took the brave step of walking away from a safe career to follow her dream of being a full-time artist, a journey that has taken hundreds of other along with her
Jen Orpin came to Manchester to study fine art at Manchester Metroplitan University, but, like so many, she didn’t immediately pursue her chosen subject as a career.
“I had a part-time job in a bar when I was at uni,” Jen says, “and after graduating I went full-time kept that going and just worked my way up in management in the hospitality sector. Alongside that I was trying to paint, trying to do both, but of course you just get used to a standard of living, to a regular wage coming in, so I just stayed and tried to make it work. I got to age 40 and all I wanted to do was paint. It was like hitting that milestone age and thinking I need to step away from it and start painting, go all in. It became a bit like, if not now, maybe not ever. I asked myself, what happens if I turn around at 50 and I wish I’d done this ten years earlier?
“Regret’s a bit of a wasted emotion really. I mean, you do what you do; you can’t change the past, you can’t influence the future, you have to live in the present, so I decided I was just going to walk away from all that security and just paint.”
Jen’s partner encouraged her, agreeing to support Jen while she got going – and a new path was set.
“It’s now almost ten years later, and I am so glad I did it. It’s the best decision I ever made. I would not be the painter I am today if I had not taken that step. What being full-time does is it means you have time to investigate, time to process, time to make mistakes, time to experiment. And I get to do that every day.”
Success, of course, rarely happens overnight, and Jen’s path hasn’t been easy, but she hasn’t once wavered from it.
“The beginning was hard, financially, and I just believed in myself, I guess, and I loved doing it, and when you love what you do, it’s easy to do. Being in front of my easel steadies my ship; if I’m in a bad place, or if things aren’t going well or if I’ve got stuff going on, being there just steadies me.”
Jen has indeed had ‘stuff going on’ and her painting through that not only provided a safe place for her, but resulted in a series of works that have caught the imagination of galleries and critics, and the all-important paying customer, and continues to do so. Her first major Manchester solo show takes place at Saul Hay Fine Art, in Manchester, this month and brings a collection of new pieces from her Motorways works to the public eye.
Motorways? Surely one of the most visually uninspiring views one can possibly imagine. Not through Jen’s eyes.
“It all started in 2015. My dad had a stroke and was in hospital, and for three months I was driving twice a week to Surrey to see him. The M56, M6, M42, M40, M25… That journey was, for me, fundamental to the process of processing what was happening. I could track my journey by the bridges, each one punctuating the drive. We lost him three months after his first stroke, and in 2018 I started painting motorway bridges.
“People often think they’re a response to lockdown, but when they learn the true story they really, deeply, get it. I take the other cars out because it’s not about other people on that journey, it’s about you on that journey. I want you to look at my art and not see other people, and wonder about their journey; there’s a place for figurative art, but that’s not what I paint, I want you to be on that journey when you look at that painting, I want you to be the sole traveller.”
Jen has been painting her motorways since 2018, but isn’t tied – emotionally or by the demands of those who commission her work – to this alone.
“Every now and then I need a change of subject matter. I need a break, and there’s a danger that you can get too boxed in by the expectations of others, become a victim of your success just in that one style.
“My Night Driving series, for example, painted in 2022; I was stretching my artistic legs and challenging myself. These presented a whole new set of challenges – capturing the subtleties of the headlights, the dancing shadows and the lights right in the distance; trying to capture that in paint is so different to painting a concrete structure in daylight.
“There’s a romanticism to driving at night, there’s a nostalgia – when you were a child, falling asleep in the back of the car, seeing the glow of the dashboard, waking up somewhere new; it’s like a capsule.”
Jen’s series from the months of lockdown also has a tang of nostalgia, for a time when the roads truly were deserted. Her paintings of the Mancunian Way and Medlock Roundabout are scenes most of us are familiar with, in a passing way, as we, literally, pass by on our way somewhere more interesting.
“I think that as artists one of our jobs is to highlight the beauty in places or structures that people wouldn’t necessarily look at; we make a permanent image of something that people may be passing every day but don’t actually see.
“And places like the Medlock Roundabout, they’re the gallery wall, the canvas, for a different kind of artist, and if you look at some of the graffiti it’s amazing. It’s among the urban grit and grime, and you can imagine them doing it under cover of darkness, but it’s their canvas. I did these in lockdown and it was really serene, but it was nostalgic too, as this is close to where I studied in my first year in Manchester and this roundabout was a landmark for me in that time.”
Jen has several commissions lined up for her motorway works, and will be in the gallery painting on all four weekends during her month-long show at Saul Fine Art, which focusses wholly on these paintings. Does she think that her motorways work might ever come to an end?
“As long as I keep travelling, I can’t see, yet, how I can stop doing it,” she laughs. “I feel, ten years after I started, that I have finally got somewhere, but there are so many roads still to travel.”
The Journey Continues, New Paintings by Jen Orpin, takes place at Saul Hay Fine Art, 4 March – 26 March, 2022, saulhayfineart.co.uk
