Vol. 112 (2021)
Painter April Gornik in Her Own Words
By THIRSTY
I often times talk about familiarity when I'm working on an image for a painting because I feel like when an image is right, I’m usually struck by a kind of recognition of familiarity in it, like I need to find out more about it, and what it is and to also just live there. The painting is about reifying some kind of compelling aspect of the image and still trying to figure out light and why it’s so attractive, and with light goes space, for me, so that I ended up being a person that makes landscapes. -- April Gornik
The COVID pandemic of 2020-2021 did not stop the renowned painter April Gornik. Her output continued and her paintings did the traveling. Represented by the Miles McEnery Gallery of New York, she was a major participant in the INTERSECT ASPEN show, a contemporary art fair formerly known as ArtAspen, that was held in August 2021.
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| Paintings by April Gornik at INTERSECT ASPEN (2021) |
An award-winning artist, Gornik received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada, and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally during her storied career. Her work has also been acquired by museums and other public collections throughout the United States.
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| April Gornik's studio |
Recent solo exhibitions include Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Danese/Corey Gallery, New York, NY; Pace Prints, New York, NY; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; Danese Gallery, New York, NY; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, NS, Canada; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE; Danese Gallery, New York, NY; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; and Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.
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| Moonlight (2019) |
Recent group exhibitions include “It’s All About Water” (curated by Elizabeth Fiore & Melissa Feldman), The Storefront, Bellport, NY; "Do You Think it Needs a Cloud," Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “That 80s Show,” Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY; “LandEscape,” Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; “Black & White,” Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY; “Photography of Place,” Palm Beach Photographic Center Museum, West Palm Beach, FL; “Water|Bodies,” Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY; “Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection,” Portland Museum of Art, Seattle, WA, traveled to The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LO and Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA.
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| Paintings by April Gornik at Miles McEnery Gallery (NYC) |
Her work can be found in the public collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Cincinnati Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Fort Worth Museum, Fort Worth, TX; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; United States Embassy, Beijing, China; United States Embassy, Moscow, Russia; University Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
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| April Gornik in her studio |
April Gornik lives and works in Sag Harbor, NY, with her husband, painter Eric Fischl, and has appeared regularly in Stay Thirsty Magazine since 2012 both as the subject of feature articles and as a contributor with her interviews of other artists in The April Gornik Conversations.
With all that has been written about April Gornik, we thought hearing about her painting, her technique and her philosophy in her own words was such an important addition to Stay Thirsty Magazine's chronicle of her life and her work that we have chosen to reprise this video, first seen in Volume 108 of the magazine, because it accomplishes that goal in living color.
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