John Orion Young

Born on a dry-land wheat farm in Lamar, Colorado, John Orion Young is a fifth generation traditional painter/sculptor and a first generation mobile digital painter.

Young studied with his father, Justin I. Young, one of the world’s best known and highly acclaimed wildlife artists. Apprenticing in his father’s studio from a very young age, Young mastered traditional painting techniques including oil, acrylic, encaustic, tempera, enamel and water color. Young created his first lost wax bronze at the age of seven. He began to exhibit, and sold his first painting, Giraffe with Cheese, when he was 12 years old.

As Young matured his work moved more and more towards contemporary art. Large-scale projects include spray painting a 250 foot mural on the side of a reservoir, welding a fourteen foot hatchet, and creating a three mile art trail in the wilderness. Returning to painting and sculpture in 2006, Young co-founded the FU Collective Gallery in Denver, where he regularly exhibited large-scale installations and oil paintings.

Young’s current work is an exercise in restraint and minimization. Limiting his work space down to a 9.7 inch touch screen, Young creates an unlimited void for his expanse of subjects. His paintings explore humanity’s shift from stasis into mobile digital life, and the meshing of analog and virtual memory.

John Orion Young currently lives in Boulder, Colorado where he is often seen riding a handmade wooden bicycle and wearing oversized plastic yellow eyeglasses.