Sunshine Gorman
Profile
We spend our lives seeking the future in billions of different ways. Human history is wrought with exploration and travel, from Abraham’s trek into Egypt to Neal Armstrong’s voyage to the moon. My paintings are a dialogue of my personal journey, spiritually and physically. The landscapes reflect a reverence for nature and a world that wants to be known – a road that wants to be walked.
Contemporary landscape painting has grown into a dialogue of the relationship between nature and humans. Sometimes it is just a simple statement of a place and a moment in time, a record of something that might not exist tomorrow. Other are painted with the purpose of making the audience aware of a need for conservation. The landscape is a part of our lives.
I see my process of painting as a pilgrimage in that life and solving the problems that arise in that process are metaphors that occur along the way. In oil and watercolor, I paint landscapes that move and guide the viewer towards an unknown destination. Thick layers of oil paint are scraped out and brushed to evoke uncertainties, emotions, and a will to keep going. In my watercolors bright tints and splotches come together in chaos and control to illuminate a longing for peace and comfort.
It is my hope that my audience will not only join me on my journey for a little while as they experience my paintings but take up their own. While other contemporary landscape paintings may express a moment in time or have an activist agenda within, my paintings want inspire a desire within the viewer to be active in their own landscapes – to walk towards a destination full of hope.
