In Orlik’s breezy painting, a seeming jumble of objects disappears off the edges of the painting, almost as sidenotes. As in the twister in the Wizard of Oz, a plethora of images pass before our eyes. A hand appears in the sky – the manus dei, hand of God, an early Medieval symbol for the presence of God. The hand is attached to the see-through frame of what appears to be part aeroplane (opened-up to reveal its emptiness, apart from a group of red dots, like the design on jolly underwear) and part angel’s wings from which the falling, twisting feathers could be dropping as a message or blessing. A pair of breasts, emitting a stream of milk, hang below like the Madonna lactans, nurturing and nourishing the earth. Disappearing off into the corner is a Medieval hairy devil with forked tail and chicken foot. The foot is also a hand which is reaching to pinch the plane/angel between forefinger and thumb in a fun game of cosmic-chase between good and evil. These composite symbols are both otherworldly (inhuman) and human and like Orlik’s excitations, they are both spirit and matter.

In the opposite corner a similar cosmic, psychological fight has taken place. A woman’s shapely leg disappears off the corner. She wears witchy-green stocking and Dorothy’s shiny red slipper (now sexy red stilettoes) surmounted by a long white dress. The Wicked Witch, Good Witch and brave young woman have been rolled into one complex personality. The Jungian shadow has been integrated. The balloon for Dorothy’s return to Kansas has disappeared leaving the balloon basket (which is also Dorothy’s house) floating in the air with strings dangling, as if it has become the balloon itself. There is no return, just whatever is next. (“I wonder what is next.” Henry Orlik, in conversation, 24th April 2025).

7th Avenue is a wonderful portrayal of Orlik’s vivid imagination in which everything is entangled. The painting is a representation of a teeming, always moving, always changing, world of energy and matter, of chance and fate. It is the supernatural world, which happens all around us, but which we do not notice. Images that have lodged in Orlik’s mind are reinterpreted and used in his paintings. He represents the modern reverence for science and technology with and within ancient religious symbols. But the older symbols are still there; timeless, they hang in the air as cosmic forces shift and patterns unfold. Orlik’s paintings are not ‘a single visual confrontation from a fixed point of view’ but the viewer is invited to ‘wonder [sic] through the painting discovering new things at every step. Like music in which the theme unfolds and develops in time. Their aim is to capture an essence of a scene not just a photographic image.’ (Henry Orlik, ‘An explanation of my method’, 1985).

Orlik raises haunting cosmic questions amongst the commonplace. A washing-line hangs from a tree with a watchful lashed eye which observes the cosmic events. “Trees are alive, like we are, they are thinking; the eye is thinking.” (Henry Orlik, in conversation, 24th April 2025). A circular, winding road rises, unrolling like an old piece of film, and finishes abruptly. Is it the end of the road? A remnant of the twister remains in a trail of white cloud.