Object Details
Artist
April Gornik
Date
1987
Medium
Lithograph on cream wove paper Edition 31/35
Dimensions
Image: 37 1/4 × 28 inches (94.6 × 71.1 cm)
Frame: 49 1/8 × 39 1/16 × 1 1/2 inches (124.8 × 99.2 × 3.8 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired through the generosity of Truman W. Eustis III, with matching support from the New York Times, for the Class of 1951 Collection of Contemporary American Prints
Object
Number
89.025
April Gornik’s images are purposely deceiving; at first glance they seem to evolve out of the great (…)
April Gornik’s images are purposely deceiving; at first glance they seem to evolve out of the great tradition of nineteenth-century American landscape painting but on closer examination it is obvious that these vistas do not exist anywhere, an abstract realism realized in the artist’s imagination. Her vision is an elegant one, filled with contemplative silences and a provocative sadness. In art school in the 1970s Gornik’s style reflected the times, conceptual and abstract. As a student first at the Cleveland Institute of Art, then at the Nova Scotia College of Art, she turned to photography combined with descriptive captioning to express herself. Arriving in New York in 1978, she returned to painting – and conventional painting at that. First on plywood, and then on canvas, she painted her personal abstract landscapes, which eventually evolved into a more realistic rendering, still and unpeopled. In Light at the Source there is a tangible spirituality beautifully expressed by the dense blacks and soft greys created with the lithographic crayon. The light dramatically pierces the clouds, dazzling the water’s surface. Characteristic of Gornik’s work, it is simultaneously an eerie and romantic view, silent and waiting. (From “A Handbook of the Collection: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,” 1998)
