GRAND RAPIDS -- ArtPrize artist Ran Ortner is no stranger to water or drama that fills his canvases.
At age 5, Ortner moved from his birthplace in San Francisco to a remote fishing village in Alaska, where he lived in a log cabin lacking running water with a missionary father he describes as "a brutal man."
"I was never to reach him," Ortner said. "In the end I understood I wasn't to reach him. I was to reach other people."
People voting through social media chose Ortner's painting "Open Water no. 24" as the winner of the $250,000 top prize in the first ArtPrize competition.
Ortner will make his first return visit here to speak at the Grand Rapids Art Museum's "Fridays at GRAM" series.
"I'm looking forward to coming back," he said, speaking by phone from his home in New York City. "It was such an amazing, wonderful, startling experience there."
| IF YOU GO | ||
|
About ArtPrize 2010
What: Second-annual international arts competition in Grand Rapids with $450,000 in prizes awarded to artists whose works receive the most public votes. ArtPrize 2009 winner Ran Ortner When: 7 p.m. Friday | ||
But the former professional motorcycle racer who found his emotional escape in surfing said he also was traumatized by the whirlwind of activity following the groundbreaking ArtPrize exhibition.
"I had interviews directly after, and I felt a bit like a deer in the headlights," he said with a laugh. "Even though it's a wonderful experience, it's also traumatic. That takes some time to adjust."
Ortner's prize-winning painting was moved to the museum the day after the exhibition closed Oct. 10. It remains there through the end of January.
The three-panel painting was purchased immediately after the exhibition by a private collector for $100,000, Ortner said in October in a radio interview on Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen.
Previously his large oil paintings might sell for $30,000, but sales were few and far between, he said on the syndicated Public Radio International show originating at WNYC-FM in New York City.
Since ArtPrize, the Brooklyn-based artist said his career has changed substantially, beginning with "quite a few" requests for private commissions.
"If I have 20 commissions lined up in front of me, that's fantastic, but it's a challenge of getting to them," he said. "I've always had time. If you have the sense that you have deadlines, then it gets in the way.
"I'm finding my footing with all of that," he said.
But Ortner said he also has the means to hire administrative help as well as preparatory help in his studio mixing paints and preparing canvases, both time-consuming tasks for a painter.
In December, Ortner participated in a group exhibition, Design Miami, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach, an exhibition of art from more than 250 galleries by 2,000 artists from all over the world.
The group show with five other artists, curated by Nick Cindric, was titled, "He Believes in a Beauty" and was held in the Miami Design District.
"Nick was interested in expressions of beauty, and what I brought down was a rather big, heavy, dark, ominous painting," Ortner said. "One of the more ferocious paintings I ever did.
"I got to be the tough-guy beauty."
| RELATED CONTENT | ||
| ArtPrize Top 10 artists share plans for 2010 | ||
In September, his New York gallery, Causey Contemporary, will host a solo exhibition of his work, titled "Deep Water: New Paintings by Ran Ortner."
On Friday, Ortner will speak in GRAM's auditorium about his experience with the first ArtPrize competition during which some 37,264 people cast a total of 334,219 votes in two rounds of balloting to pick the 10 artists who shared $450,000 in prize money.
Afterward, Ortner will move to the galleries where his 6-foot tall, 19-foot wide painting now hangs to talk about it as well as answer questions.
Ortner said he prefers that part of the program.
"As soon as I'm in front of the painting, my mind kicks in as if I'm working on it," he said. "Because that's how I spend my life."
E-mail Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk: jkaczmarczyk@grpress.com