
Nate Orton makes no secret of where he’s from. His paintings speak to his uncanny connection to the Pacific and Inland Northwest, reflecting his upbringing in North Central Idaho and current life in Milwaukie, Oregon. He is equally forthright about his interrelationship with the land and human-made environments, even about his artistic forebears. His current show at after / time gallery, King Tide in Empty Spaces, calls upon the notion of a “king tide”—the unscientific term for highest of tides—and captures a feeling of burgeoning emotion. Occurring with full and new moons, king tides are the makings of a special triangulation between the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Orton’s works speak to a more personal triangulation, filling vast and vacant spaces in familiar locations.
after/ time is an experimental curatorial platform and gallery collectively run by a group of artists. It boasts a brick and mortar space downtown, only a half a block away from Director’s Park. The inside of the gallery might feel austere and hollow with its concrete floors, white walls, industrial ceilings but Orton’s paintings warm the space, offering portals into memory and generating a nostalgic patina.

The works read like biographic world-building, recollected spaces full of life but fuzzy on the details, remembered because of their affective imprint and gravitational pull. Many of Orton’s paintings contain bodies of water, land, and light, in some kind of conversation, and many feature reflections and mirror images, conjuring worlds within worlds. In Sleepwalker, a figure walks under a bridge as if balancing on its reflection in the river. The water under the bridge also reflects three nearby trees and the sun that hangs above this scene. In the left upper corner of the painting, the sky becomes dark, and the moon shines, as if a page is being turned—from day to night, or vice versa.
Each of Orton’s paintings was framed by Josh Stedman either with wood from local fallen trees or salvaged exotic hardwood. The wood frames offer a window-like aura to the works within them, as if the viewer is peering into an alternate reality, a space of reminiscence and recognition. Orton’s piece My Plaid Pantry has a mailbox presents a bubblegum pink mailbox, backed by the nighttime facade of a convenience store. Though no name is legible, the store is easily identifiable as part of the local Plaid Pantry chain because of its blue, yellow, and red logo. This, like the majority of other works in the show, was painted with casein tempera on panel. This medium lends a distinctive, uneven texture.
In the press release for his show, Orton describes carrying a sketchbook wherever he goes in order to render scenes—like the Plaid Pantry mailbox—which become more fully realized through paintings, prints and zines that he creates in his studio practice. He holds a background in printmaking, hinted at by his painting Death in a pale pickup truck, which depicts a Fred Meyer sign in backwards lettering—a requisite skill for printmaking. Orton’s book, The Passenger, published by Division Leap, also speaks to this interest. The book is included in the exhibition and is accompanied by a large-scale mural of the cover imagery and a corresponding letterpress and relief print. The moon features prominently in all these pieces.

Orton’s practice has become a way for him to keep a record of surrealistic moments from his day-to-day life, fostering a sense of intimacy with his surroundings. The painting Clear day in the suburbs, depicts a view from a window of a house. A figure mows the grass around a tree, seeming to transform the ground from pink to green. The tree is barren, indicating that this could be a moment in winter—a rare day of crystal sky. Yellow curtains frame the foregrounded window. Two images appear to be taped onto its glass: one of a human figure and the other of a cat. With this quotidian imagery, Orton presents the viewer with a tonal depiction of the scene but leaves the emotional timbre up for grabs.
Orton’s recent body of work begs correlation with Kelly Reichardt’s 2022 film Showing Up, which peers into the aesthetic and culture of Portland’s visual art scene. This work imprints with its similar biographical world-building, an aesthetic of a generation of artists who work with muted hues, untidy craft and surrealistic imagery to convey feminist themes. The film portrays the passing relationships between several older generations of artists and Zoomers who populate a local arts college, chronicling the inevitable influence of place that transcends generations.

In the same way, Orton pays homage to an elder generation of artists: He specifically cites 20th century painters of the region—Amanda Snyder, Morris Graves and Charles Heaney—as part of his legacy, all of whom painted familiar scenes with distinct textures, heightened emotionality, and hints of folk flare. Like many motifs in Showing Up, Orton’s work illuminates the memory of familiar moments and places specific to this local community, not so far in the past, but past enough to pull at the longing thread of nostalgia.
Throughout the works in King Tide in Empty Spaces, Orton uses a contemporary color palette, including yellows, pinks, light blues, and flashes of orange, to chronicle a present slipping into memory. The worlds he paints—so reflective the landscape and quintessential pit stops of my own life as a resident of southeast Portland—distills and reflects back the preciousness of day-to-day existence. Its tender recognition of affect within the seemingly mundane strikes a delicate balance between understated and brimming with life.

after / time is located at 735 SW 9th Ave #110 in Portland. Gallery hours are Tues & Thurs 6-8 pm and Saturday 12-5 pm. January 30th is the last day this show will be open to the public. Contact Nate Orton at nateorton@gmail.com with requests for private showings through the end of the month.
Nate’s art work is incredible. I love the ordinary, every day scenes that he’s able to make you really think about it. He’s very talented, just like his dad!
I love Nate Orton’s inspirational art! Bravo!
He’s got so much talent and it’s not fair! Haha