Joseph Orr was born in Japan. Half American and half Japanese, he spent his first four years in an orphanage until he was adopted by an American service couple and brought to the United States. As a service family, the Orr's moved regularly around the country, and it is probably during his childhood when Joseph Orr discovered his love for travel. To this day he and his wife, Rita enjoy travelling and seeing the United States. In the late 1960s, Orr took a job with Hallmark cards operating machinery. It was there that he met Tony Allison, a Hallmark artist, who mentored Orr. Encouraged by Allison, Orr took art classes at the Kansas City Art Institute and eventually worked for Hallmark for four years. Restless to pursue his own creativity, Orr left Hallmark and set out on his own. In 1990 he had a painting accepted into the Art for the Parks competition and gallery representation soon followed. Joseph Orr paints the landscape of America in places he likes to visit. Working primarily from sketches made on location, he creates finished paintings that capture the essence and tranquility of the scene. Using light and shadow to convey mood and flavor of an ethereal moment, his paintings are works of art centered on scenes of solitude, which the viewer may happen upon regularly or glimpse momentarily in passing. "The place doesn't have to be profound or monumentally significant," he says, "it just has to express something in me that another person can understand and appreciate." Orr's landscapes have garnered him many awards; therefore, Joseph is recognized as a viable component of the contemporary art world. Four times, as recently as 2003, his paintings have been included among the Arts for the Parks "Top 100" competition in Jackson, Wyoming. In 1993, his entry won the historical Art Award. The magazines Workshop, Art of the West, and Southwest Art have featured his work, and Joseph has contributed chapters or instructional material to several Northlight books. Joseph Orr's paintings also illustrate the pages of Art From the Parks by Rachel R. Wolfe, and A Town on Two Rivers by Victoria Hubbell. Among permanent collections of his works are: the NCAA, Indianapolis, Indiana; The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; and Kansas City Southern Railway, Kansas City, Missouri.