Bio

 

Orion has been making things for as long as he can remember. Having a passion for creating with his hands, he has delved into many  artistic disciplines including, drawing, painting, sculpture, woodwork & metalwork...whatever he can get his hands on. He attended Steiner schools growing up which helped nurture his creativity and sense of self. They focus  on skills such as painting, clay sculpture & ceramics, woodwork, fabrics, gardening and cooking. Growing up with parents who always read him stories from folklore and fairy tales, his fascination with the fantasy genre has just gotten stronger as he grew up. Books like the Grimms' Fairy Tales, the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, dinotopia and many more are among the list of things that inspire him to this day.

 

He moved around a lot as a child living in places places such as England, Colorado, North Carolina, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Hawaii (Kauai and Maui) then finally arriving in Auckland, New Zealand in 2004 at the age of 11. He is now a dual citizen.

 

Moving to New Zealand was a huge experience for him as his dad had introduced him to the Lord of the Ring trilogy and Weta Workshop, the company responsible for the special effects on the films. Learning more about this industry got him supercharged to really take up art as a career so from around 2005 onwards, his goals were set to become a professional artist of some kind. Originally he wanted to be a special FX makeup artist after seeing all of the creatures in different films but then thought “wouldn’t it be cooler to actually design these and be part of the whole process?” thats how he got into concept art.

 

Throughout high school he was lucky enough to have some really great carving, sculpture and metalwork (forgery) teachers which helped him discover his love of craft traditions that have been passed down through the centuries. He also was deeply immersed in biology and chemistry which explained many of the phenomena around us in the natural world.

 

After leaving high school, he attended an animation college for one year receiving top grades but none the less deciding that it wasn’t the path for him. A year later he decided to see if fine arts would be his thing studying at Whitecliffe college of arts and design for 2 years, receiving a diploma. during this time, he discovered a number of extra curricular artist meet ups around Auckland where he met a many local artists with their own stories of how they got started in their artistic careers. He has since decided to follow his own path of becoming a freelance artist and forge his own path, finding the tertiary education system in NZ to be deficient in the fields of illustration and concept art.

 

He is a regular at many of the artist drawing meet ups around the Auckland area and is  constantly making new friends with local talent.

 

Events include: