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April Gornik, Fresh Light. 1987
April Gornik: ‘Sun, Storm, Cloud’ 2004 by Olaf Zalcman
It’s a few years ago that my friend and artist Dennis Tremalio told me about April Gornik, an American painter specializing in (mainly) large land- and seascapes. I was immediately impressed by her very special touch, the elegant composition of her paintings and an unique and somewhat mystical atmosphere emanating from her works. Moreover, I liked how even the most spectacular sceneries would always avoid clichés and the usual sentimentalism of classical landscapes, and instead inspire plenitude and majesty. For me she was definitely a very modern artist.
I regularily kept visiting April’s website, curious about what would be her next work, and never disappointed.
One day I looked again at one of her early works, and for once I read the title: ‘Dream Light’. A familiar image came right away to my mind: ‘el Sonador’ (‘the dreamer’, see picture below), which is what we use to call a mountain peak overlooking a valley near our property in Andalucia - as its outline evokes the silhouette of a sleeping man. The shape as well as the similar name were strong enough to let me share it with April in a message through her website.
I was surprised by her fast and friendly answer, when she told me that ‘her’ mountain was actually in the Caribbean… at least some Spanish connection was there!
However we kept on exchanging emails about her and her art, and she kindly proposed to meet whenever I would be in New York.
Which happened a few days ago. I visited April’s and her husband Eric Fischl’s studios in the Hamptons, at about 2.30 hours drive from Manhattan. 
I had the chance to meet both artists in their every day environment, a wonderful house built in the woods inside a protected reserve. I happened to learn about April’s sophisticated layering technique, one explanation for the depth of her surfaces and colours. She also elaborated on why she never displays humans nor human objects, which is to avoid providing any hint of scale.
At the question about if she felt like being part of any movement or trend, April expressed her desire to stay away from any classification or label. The conversation came finally to the “Luminists’ (1850-80), pioneers in large scale landscapes. Yet April distanced herself from their messianic vision of the American land. There was no moment April would seem annoyed by any question. She appeared to me as the person I had imagined: a strong minded artist, entirely committed to the task she had chosen of revealing the magic beauty of our world, at a giant scale.
© Olaf Zalcman is a French artist and contributor to kunstjaar2009
- April Gornik: March 12–April 5, 2009, American Academy of Arts & Letters Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts / May 2–July 5, 2009, "The Luminous Landscapes of April Gornik", The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY
- Eric Fischl has gallery shows opening in Paris at the end of April and in Berlin at the beginning of May
