April Gornik - Coop

I discovered April Gornik through this weeks readings and find her large scale landscapes relevant to my work in many ways. This reading came at a perfect time as I just completed the largest painting I have ever done and it is a landscape. I admire Gornik's voluptuous interpretation of landscapes and variety of detail. Her life size paintings force the viewer to confront the image as if they were stepping into the landscape themselves. I resonated with this experience through my last painting by learning how scale can change a painting. I thought Gornik's opinion on scale was interesting because she prefers to work really large or small and nothing in between. Her main works are all large scale landscape paintings. I really admire the dramatic light she creates within most of her pieces. I think the lighting and colors in her work are what drive the viewer experience. Although the paintings are photo realistic in some ways, they are very recognizable as paintings and not photo replications. It is clear upon viewing her work that there is a variety of brush strokes and treatments to the canvas. These details make it clear that it is handcrafted and not created by a camera. However, Gornik does use photography for inspiration. She takes her own photographs and uses photoshop to cut them up and mix them together to create a new image. Gornik also begins many of her works with preliminary drawings. Her paintings start with under paintings and then she builds up many layers. This is important to her work because all of the fine detail and work put into the layers are the reason her paintings have so much depth. Although detailed, her work is also very organic and has lot of movement.

April Gornik captures dynamic moments in nature that give the paintings a natural energy. Her work is inspiring to me because she manages to transform an image that at first appears to be taken by a photograph into a space that feels real as though you could be there. I also admire her cloudscapes as well as her waterscapes.