By Erin Bank

The Sunset District art community grieves the loss of Douglas Gorney, who died of a heart attack on Nov. 19. Gorney, a native San Franciscan, was 63 years old and lived in the Sunset the last decade of his life.

Doug was born in 1961 to Elizabeth Gorney (née Majo) and Mark Gorney. Elizabeth, originally from Duluth, Minnesota, and Mark, originally from a Jewish community in Mexico City, met in San Francisco, then moved around during Mark’s service in the US Navy. They returned to the City following the birth of Gorney’s sister, Cynthia, in the 1950s.

The family settled in the Telegraph Hill/North Beach area, where Gorney and his younger brother Mark were born. Gorney attended the Town School for Boys and University High School. The family did not have a car, so they spent much of their time on public transportation. When Cynthia learned that her brother had become non-responsive on a BART train, she was struck by the circumstances.

“Knowing he was on a train surrounded by people trying to take care of him, and that it was quick, was some comfort,” she said.

The Gorney family was tight-knit, and all three Gorney children remained in the Bay Area as adults.

According to Gorney’s sister Cynthia, there was art in the family. Their mother had been an English student, and their father – a plastic surgeon – drew. Gorney’s brother Mark is in the music business working as a publicist, booking agent, and as a vinyl DJ. Cynthia, who went on to become a career journalist, sketched in college, which she says had an impact on her younger brother.

“He would exaggerate how good I was and tell me he remembered my drawings,” she said.

As the younger brother, Mark would follow Gorney around and remembers their bike rides when visiting Duluth. As adults, they stayed close, and their conversations would range from the philosophical to the granular. They shared an interest in avant garde art and music and recorded comedic audio sketches under the name Anteater Theater.

“He knew the answer to everything,” Mark said.

Gorney did not show a proclivity toward fine arts until he was in college, first at Wesleyan College in Massachusetts and then at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he took art classes and went on to study sculpture at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the College of the Arts) and the Art Institute of Chicago. He worked as an assistant for the famous San Francisco sculptor Aristides Demetrios and filled notebooks with ideas.

Gorney’s path then took him to Fairfield, Iowa to study and teach transcendental meditation, a practice he started in high school. He then returned to San Francisco and lived in the Mission District. He began writing and editing for early business websites, which served as his career for many years. It was only about 15 years ago when he began sketching and painting, thanks to a paint set given to him by his girlfriend. He kept writing but eventually realized he could work on commission and become a paid artist.

It wasn’t an easy path, and Gorney moved to the Sunset District in 2012 in search of lower rent. This ended up being a huge turning point in his life.

“He fell in love with the colors of the sky when the fog lifts, and of course Ocean Beach,” Cynthia said, adding it was fun for the family to visit because they hadn’t spent much time in the Sunset growing up.

“He painted everything. He really loved drawing the infrastructure – the light poles and the electric poles and the corners and the houses and the driveways,” she said.

Gorney started a local chapter of the San Francisco Urban Sketchers group, the Sunset Sketchers, in 2018. The group meets every weekend to draw outside together. Gorney wanted to welcome everyone in, regardless of skill or training, and served as a mentor for many of the artists in the group. He was also a co-founder of the B0ardside collaborative (using a zero instead of the letter o) that publishes a quarterly zine.

“I can’t get over how he made this wonderful family and world around him as a function of his art,” Cynthia said.

As testament to his impact on the Sunset neighborhood, District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio submitted an in-memoriam at a Board of Supervisors meeting.

A memorial service for Gorney took place on Nov. 30 at the Swedenborgian Church in Pacific Heights. The church was filled and overflowing with family and friends.

“Doug was genuine, good with people, and a supportive and gentle soul. He was someone you could not dislike,” Mark said. “I’m mad we will never get to see what his career could have been.”

To learn more about the artist, go to gorney.studio.