April Gornik Offers Expansive Views to 'The Other Side'

The volatile beauty of dark storm clouds gathering on the horizon, or relentless churning ocean waves illuminated by the brilliant light of a late setting sun are the types of fleeting scenes that artist April Gornik frequently manages to capture in her paintings.

Though her landscapes evoke a sense of the familiar — especially for those of us who live on the East End — there is nearly always an ethereal quality to Gornik’s views as well, which means they are never quite what they appear to be at first glance.

And what massive views they are.

Gornik likes to work large — really large — up to 10 feet in size, and her paintings often take up whole walls. In fact, several of them are doing exactly that right now at Miles McEnery Gallery in Manhattan where Gornik’s exhibition “The Other Side” is on view through October 21.

Besides her work as an artist, Gornik is a well-known figure around Sag Harbor where she spearheaded efforts to rebuild the Sag Harbor Cinema as a nonprofit entity after a devastating 2016 fire. She also co-founded The Church artist space on Madison Street with her husband, artist Eric Fischl, which opened in 2021.

While Gornik describes herself as an essentially optimistic person, she admits that in her landscapes, there are often shades of a darker reality that go unnamed, but are definitely present. Gornik admits that she experienced anxiety as she was working to finish up the restoration on Sag Harbor Cinema and get The Church project off the ground, both of which came in the midst of the pandemic.

“I had really disturbed sleep and I was not dreaming the way I should be,” she said during a recent interview at her North Haven home. “But I’m the person who doesn’t get too flipped out about nightmares. Even if they disturb me into wakefulness, I start wondering what they mean.”

On Monday, October 16, The Church and Friends of the John Jermain Library are teaming up to sponsor a bus trip to New York City and a visit to The Whitney Museum of American Art, where Sheri Pasquarella, The Church’s executive director, will lead tours of exhibitions on view, followed by a visit to Miles McEnery Gallery where Gornik will take the group through a tour of “The Other Side.”

In addition, on Thursday, October 26, The Church will host a Sag Harbor concert by composer and cellist Niles Luther, whose musical piece “Light Bending the World” was commissioned by Montage Music Society and inspired by Gornik’s painting of the same name. He will be joined by the organization’s director Debra Ayers on piano and violinist Laurie Carney from the American String Quartet.

“Niles is this lovely, super-talented guy who was asked by Montage Music Society to collaborate with me,” explained Gornik. “We were both interested, but couldn’t figure it out. I was a third of the way through ‘Light Bending the World,’ he came out and spent a long weekend and lived in my studio. I left him in there with a keyboard and he started composing. I’m so in awe with his ability to come up with music.

“Debra Ayers, who runs Montage Music is a fabulous musician and the way they execute pieces is so gorgeous.”

While also beautiful, Gornik’s views are rarely literal translations of a real-world locale. Instead, she could easily juxtapose multiple places she’s been in a single view, be it Africa or a destination she has only dreamed about, merging East End views, for example, with skies that she may have encountered half a world away or perhaps only in her mind’s eye.

This is why her paintings feel realistic and familiar, but entirely otherworldly at the same time.

“My paintings try to balance the world,” explained Gornik. “Watching it go out of balance is terrifying, and I don’t think I’m alone. I think everyone feels like what the f--- is going on here? It’s tremendously frightening.

“As a kid, I grew up in a household that had massive terror in it,” admitted Gornik, who hails from Cleveland, Ohio. “I loved storms and tornadoes, especially when I would see something like that light below dark clouds.”

Her painting “The Other Side II,” is an illustration of the approaching storm on the horizon — the flat calm landscape is punctuated by a menacing black cloud formation that dominates the upper portion of the canvas, and is letting loose in the not too far distance.

“I kept looking at that painting and thinking, by ‘The Other Side,’ I don’t mean one specific thing,” she explained. “I mean what you can’t see, but what you should try to see in terms of nature and its balance. For me, it’s wilderness. It’s the thing so far outside ourselves we can’t get around it, but it’s significant and important and beautiful and unnerving. The terror of the sublime.

“I think it’s so important people let their minds wander or daydream. You have to be in a state of boredom to do that. One of the problems of having devices growing out of our bodies, we don’t give ourselves a beat to slough off and daydream,” she said. “When working in the studio, it’s a constant opening of the door to your subconscious. It’s not unlike finding a way out of your situation in a disturbing dream. As I’m working, I’m making decisions.”

While the worldwide shut down due to COVID-19 was an event that spurred many artists to be prolific in the studio, it did not have that same effect on Gornik.

“In 2020, I did one painting only,” Gornik admitted. “I was the opposite of people who have said the pandemic was so good for their work and they had the best time in the studio and had never been so productive. I was making masks, I planted a vegetable garden. Everyone was in their studios feeling good about art, I just couldn’t do that.

“I’m a worry-wart generally, and art seemed less significant in the face of a slow moving disaster, which is what it felt like was going on,” she added. “In 2021, I picked up steam and that’s when the pandemic had glimmers of hope, and I was working a little more, then I did more in 2022 and in ’23 for this show.”

Gornik explains that in some ways, her painting “Spirit Clouds III” was a reaction to the pandemic and coming to terms with the mortality of all living things.

“It’s the way the Earth absorbs and lets go of life. I felt I was emerging from something, in subsequent paintings, I got a jones to do big panoramas,” said Gornik. “When I make work, I get so deeply involved in it, it feels like I’m exploring something new. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing that painting. I usually understand retroactively why I did that.”

It’s not just the ominous nature of the pandemic that found its way into her most recent work. Gornik sees other signs in what’s happening in terms of the climate crisis as also figuring into her psyche. As someone who pays close attention, not only to dreams, but clues in the natural world, the evidence is there.

“A lot of people don’t value the things I value. I have more passion for the complexity of life outside myself,” she said. “I don’t mean that in a denigrating fashion. I do love people, or wouldn’t do what I do here. But in some fundamental way, it’s equally meaningful for me. That’s where spirituality lives — the objective world outside of me.”

Gornik describes this current body of work as some of the most complex paintings she has ever done. She admits that she was nearly driven to tears while trying to perfect an ocean wave crashing on shore in her painting “Just Before I Left the Ground.”

“When I’m painting and it’s formed enough to see what it’s trying to become, my eyes will go to the wrong thing and find the problem,” she explained. “There are millions of problems in a painting like this. By the time it’s done, I’ve made so many different decisions … When you’re done, the painting just closes itself. You can’t go back into it. It’s like a shut door. It takes on its own life.

“It’s very birthy — all of a sudden, you’re looking at something so far outside yourself.”

The Monday, October 16, bus trip to New York City sponsored by The Church and Friends of the John Jermain Library departs Sag Harbor at 8 a.m. and visits The Whitney Museum of American Art and April Gornik’s exhibition “The Other Side,” running through October 21 at Miles McEnery Gallery, 525 West 22nd Street. Tickets are $125 at thechurchsagharbor.org.

Montage Music Society’s salon concert at The Church featuring composer Niles Luther’s “Light Bending the World,” inspired by April Gornik’s painting, is Thursday, October 26, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 ($25 members, $15 live stream). After the performance, there will be a Q&A with Gornik and the musicians.

The Church is located at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.