Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in 1961, he attended public schools and began obsessively with writing, publishing poems, short stories, and translations in literary magazines as a freelance journalist and editor in Columbus, Ohio.
In 1987 he moved to Chicago in 1987 and started as a self-taught artist and musician to make art: paintings, sculptures, bottles, sticks, watercolors, signs, masks and his own music on the keyboard and accordion.
In 1990 he gave up the last regular job and started selling art and at the same time ran a painting business - construction, painting and drywall. In the early 1990s, he participated in the first art exhibitions and was featured in various print and TV media in Chicago.
Under the names "King Orth" "El Conde" and "Old King Orthy" he showed and sold works of various kinds in the Midwest and on the East Coast in the East Coast.
After the successful show at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago in 1994 and trips to the United States, England, Europe, Southeast Asia and India, Orth left the United States in 1996 and settled in Oaxaca, Mexico, and disappeared almost entirely from the art scene for ten years.
In 2006 he began to travel to the USA again and settled in Austin, Texas, in 2007, where he started his own successful painting business.
In 2012, with four sons by now, Orth started making art again, exhibiting and selling on Facebook and with its own website.
In 2014 Orth equips a blue Ford pickup truck for its own mobile art exhibition and performance, which he calls the "King Orth Fancy Man Road Show", and starts its comeback in art production.