I’ve written before about how much I love the art of April Gornik, and it’s great to see that the New York Times agrees with me that she’s fabulous. Go read the lovely review of her current show, The Luminous Landscapes of April Gornik, and see her work at her website (including several new paintings from 2008).
If you find yourself on Long Island between now and July 5, do yourself a favor and go see the show. I wish I could.
Story on canvas. Feelings in paint. The moment of drawn breath, of perfect light. Places that I want to find myself in. Places to wander and wonder; where I may remember that at my best, I am so much bigger inside than outside. That’s what I find in April Gornik’s work.
I am an artist that values, above all, the ability of art to move me emotionally and psychically. I make art that makes me question, that derives its power from being vulnerable to interpretation, that is intuitive, that is beautiful. — April Gornik
I have been wanting for a while to write about April Gornik’s paintings. But instead I just get lost in them, and then eventually wander away from the computer feeling full of light and stillness, full of the under-the-skin hum of a storm on the horizon, full of something bubbling up from deep places.
These paintings punch into me and grab tight, pull me close, closer, right into them. Me inside the painting, the painting inside me. That amazing ecstatic moment of utter connection with the art and with myself.
This is what I look for. Connection with others, connection with self. The fascinating conversation where minds vibrate on the same frequency and time disappears while people wander around in each other’s heads. The meal and the drink that are perfect for the moment, whether it’s nine courses with ancient Margaux or curry and a beer. The kind of sex that is also love and discovery. Music in my headphones, or coming alive right in front of me as the band begins to play. Dancing. Writing something that makes me feel fierce and focused and for that moment totally aligned inside, the tumblers of me all coming together and unlocking parts of myself that I have always hoped would someday be free. The heart-stopping beauty of a dragonfly against a blue sky, or storm clouds, or cool, careless wind rising against a gray autumn sky that makes me feel so full of possibility.
I look for that which will lever me open and expand me, and I find it in April Gornik’s work.
Gornik says her work is non-narrative but yes, full of story. I think so too. The story is there the light — my god, the light. It’s in the size — immense and yet so intimate, so personal. It’s in the motion and the stillness. It’s in the structure, the particular focal points that draw me in, that make me want to find my way into the distance of it and just keep going.
I think of these works as internal landscapes — Gornik isn’t painting a patch of planet Earth, she’s painting her own interior, and mine too. I stand on the edge of these paintings and feel as though I am stepping into myself. If I follow that green path as it begins to burn, in the forest beyond something is waiting to happen, something that already makes me feel huge inside…
Not a narrative, but a story that I understand not so much with my head as with my heart.
…visual arts are and always have been a certain kind of virtual reality. The real power of the visual arts in their capacity as virtual reality is the physicality of the experience, the somatic connection that remains between the work of art, the artist who made it, and the person looking at it. That connection is an essential part of the human experience…
— “An Artist’s Perspective on Visual Literacy” by April Gornik
And watch this excerpt from a 2007 interview in which Gornik speaks about her work and takes us into her studio as she paints.
I talk in this blog a fair amount about what it means to me to be a human being and a writer. It’s an absolute pleasure to write this little love letter to an artist who talks back to those essential parts of me.
April, thank you for permission to use your images, and thank you so much for your work. I really love it.
