Ran Ortner is a California-born artist who grew up in Alaska. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Ortner is known for his large-format paintings of foaming waves and turbulent movement of opalescent sea water, motifs that evoke the expansive feeling of the reverberating insistence of life and visceral memories Ortner has accumulated through decades of surfing. In this artist talk, Ortner discusses his personal history of racing motorcycles and surfing, and how they inform his artistic practice and ongoing literary exploration. Essential to both his art and these activities is that “the all-important is no longer just a concept.”