74. Jen Orpin - Holding On To Day

2026
Oil on cradled panel
12.5 x 17.5 x 2 cm
Signed on Verso

Jen Orpin is a Manchester-based painter whose work explores roads, motorways, everyday structures and the liminal landscapes that surround them. Working primarily in oil paint on canvas, birch plywood, and cradled panels, Orpin transforms overlooked infrastructure into emotionally resonant spaces, treating roads and transient environments as sites of memory, nostalgia, and human connection. Her paintings focus on the quiet significance of the journeys people make and the environments that shape everyday life, elevating places often dismissed as mundane into contemplative landscapes.

Based at Rogue Artists' Studios, Orpin is a full-time practising artist and a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. In 2019, she co-founded Rogue Women, curating and organising four survey exhibitions featuring members and invited artists from across the UK. She is also the founder of A Small Space Artist Collective.

Her motorway paintings have received significant media attention, featuring in The Guardian online, twice in The Observer New Review, on BBC Radio 6 Music, and on ITVX.

Orpin studied Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1996, following an Art Foundation at West Surrey College of Art and Design.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Architecture of Connection at Saul Hay Gallery (2025), A Navigation of Memory at Jari Lager Gallery (2024), and We Left Nothing Behind at Union Gallery (2024). She has also presented solo projects at Art Busan and exhibited internationally in Norway, Greece, Indonesia and South Korea.

Her work has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition for the past three consecutive years and has appeared in exhibitions including ING Discerning Eye, The London Group Open, the New Light Art Prize, and the London Art Fair.

Her paintings are held in collections including Manchester Art Gallery and The New Art Gallery Walsall.