The Creative Process
By Barry Oretsky
To my mind, a major distinction between realism and romance is the presentation of allegories of life.
A romantic sensibility lets an artist choose images that are filled with allegory. I certainly am more
than happy to have people see a romantic sensibility in my work. That immediately separates my art from
dry factuality. But there are limitations to a romantic view of life and art. Not all romantic art is
filled with sweetness and light.
I pursue images. I will shoot thousands of slides searching for those special images in terms of
exploration and meditation. They hold visual elements and metaphors inherent in the image. I have
found that I take pictures without consciously composing the subject matter. When I get back to
my studio, the selection process involves sitting down with a slide projector and spending time with
each image to become acquainted with its obvious and less obvious details.
Once I have made the commitment to an image and decided upon my interpretation, the follow-through for
me is craftsmanship. A painting is the sum total of its elements. The painter can subdue, enhance or
eliminate. I maintain firm compositional control by relying on precise preliminary sketches.
You and I can see a great painting and come to feel truth expressed. We may not have words to describe
the achievement, but we sense it wordlessly. Art lies outside the artist - approachable yet distinct. With
that humbling thought in mind, I revert in my daydreams and strategies to my own work. Nevertheless, I'm
in charge and I work with all the elements of that great otherness which is art.
I know I'm finished when I'm satisfied that I have resolved all the elements. There is a sense of
completion.
Barry Oretsky's Realism
For sheer descriptive power, Barry Oretsky's paintings are hard to beat. More than that, their
power of perception is in the service of acute social observation, verging on revelation. His
pictures have the force of paradox. He describes the physical reality of the world with such
intensity and blazing clarity that it becomes peculiarly "metaphysical" - uncanny. In other words,
what seems like a coolly realized, casually observed, all too familiar scene, is subliminally charged -
unexpectedly fraught with odd emotional significance, which, it turns out, was latent in the scene all
along. For all the apparent neutrality and detachment of his observation, Oretsky's pictures
communicate a sense of impacted desperation, endemic to the American scene. Indeed, his works
can be taken as contemporary emblematic illustrations of Thoreau's famous observation that the
mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.
For all their extroverted realism, Oretsky's paintings are profoundly introverted. They are major
contributions to the vision of the human condition implicit in the best American realism.
Donald Kuspit, PhD
Professor of Art History and Philosophy
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Private Collections
TSN, The Sports Network, Toronto, ON
Quinn International, Argau, Switzerland
ChildHelp Fund, Washington, DC
Solomon & Solomon, Barristers, Toronto, ON
The Gordon Group, Toronto, ON
Tara Investments, Grand Cayman Islands
Jason Meat Co., St. Louis, MO
Reliable Fur Company, Toronto, ON
Fallbrook Holdings, Toronto, ON
Reliable Fur Company, Toronto, ON
Jason Meat Co., St. Louis, MO
Sanwa BK, New York, NY
