Profile: Art Along the Avenues

Artist Douglas Gorney

Douglas Gorney is an artist known for finding the beauty in the ubiquitous overhead wires that crisscross San Francisco’s Sunset neighborhood. He captures the fog, the pastel homes, and the beach, too. But the Sunset is a relatively new discovery for the San Francisco native.

Born and raised here, Doug never managed to venture very far west of Twin Peaks. He only first stepped foot in the Sunset eight years ago, when rising rents priced him out of the Mission. 

The Sunset was “terra incognita,” Doug recalls. But he made the Sunset his home and muse out of necessity.

“It was beautiful; it grabbed me right away,” he says. “The light and the color and the look of the neighborhoods was something I’d never seen before. The Sunset seemed to say, ‘Tell my story.’”

Doug has been doing so ever since, using both watercolors and pen and ink. The delicate pastel hues of his watercolors capture the subtle colors of the Sunset’s stucco homes and the blue wash of sky. Doug doesn’t dwell on romantic scenes; instead he renders the reality around him, including storefronts and Muni tracks, even a lovingly detailed hot rod, and, of course, those ubiquitous wires snaking overhead.

Doug studied sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, but other pursuits intervened and he didn’t pick up a drawing pencil for 30 years. That changed when his father had a stroke and began art therapy. Doug and his father began sketching together. Then came a gift of watercolors and a book on urban sketching, and his life found a new direction. 

Now he takes commissions – clients often seek portraits of their home – and sells originals and prints of his watercolors and pen and ink drawings on his website, and through gallery showings. Fans follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

As a practitioner of urban sketching, Doug is part of a global community of sketchers who are dedicated to drawing where they live and travel. Doug started Sunset Sketchers in 2018, as a subset of San Francisco Bay Area Urban Sketchers. Every weekend a few dozen sketchers gather to draw in a different Westside spot. It’s casual, no real membership, Doug says, although several hundred people have joined the Sunset Sketchers Facebook page. 

“One really nice surprise moving here is the wonderful art community in the Sunset, We have great galleries and an artists’ collective,” Doug says. “Here we all are at the edge of the world,” he says. “It’s very evocative for me.”

Photo by Byrde Sellergren. Reported and written by volunteer community journalist Jan Cook. We encourage retired journalists and student journalists in high school and college to volunteer as writers for Supervisor Engardio’s newsletter. Interested? Apply here. Do you know a story you would like to see featured in the newsletter? Tell us about it here.