April Gornik draws upon the nineteenth-century tradition of American landscape painting, which affirmed the idea of America as the "new Eden" at the very time when the land was being spanned by the railroads and transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Gornik once said, "The images have to do with my psychology and deal with the question of why we possess the world we possess. Landscape is my vocabulary for thinking about the world." With "Storm Passing" the foreboding storm and tense, airless environment have ominous overtones that mirror emotional states and often reflect the images of her dreams and imagination.