For more than 10 years Ortho shared a large studio in an old school building with Shije, a man originally from Yugoslavia. The building is situated on the famous Albert Cuyp market in Amsterdam. Downstairs it housed a boxing school and upstairs four studios. In this studio Ortho made large paintings, on canvas and on paper, in oils and acrylics.

The content is mostly Canadian, it varies from sports, the landscape of his youth to the visual splash of the mass media. In this work he often included jetfighters. They represented beauty and power to him, a world of winged warrior-gods, their jet-streams criss-crossing the sky.

Whatever the medium or content he wanted the paintings to have a life of their own. Fascinated by movement he used lines, forms, colours in his compositions to intrigue the eyes and keep them moving.