Sierra Nevada Paintings

American Hyperrealist Artist Alan Sonneman

Painting California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains

  Alan Sonneman’s artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and American Embassies worldwide, an enduring artistic presence spanning the last four decades. He has devoted his practice to hyperrealist paintings of California’s High Sierra mountains and Owens Valley for most of that period of time.

  When Sonneman attended the San Francisco Art Institute starting in 1973 he had little knowledge of the mountain range known as the Sierra Nevada. Over these years he has made frequent trips into the heights of this great range of mountains to capture their beauty. Drawing from the romantic tradition of the American West depicted by the 19th-century painters Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran which he first encountered as a child visiting the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. he has built a body of work based on these observations.

  Sonneman views these paintings as a form of portraiture. He believes that representational painting can reveal more about reality and perception than photography or the naked eye. His goal is not to replicate the landscape perfectly but to convey the experience of observing it. Hiking these mountain trails every summer, Sonneman has sought out a deeper understanding of this landscape, Time and its passing is the object of observation in this work.

California's Majestic Sierra Nevada

  • Alan Sonneman American artist

    Alan Sonneman

    Since 1999 Alan Sonneman has made over 50 trips into the high basins of California’s Sierra Nevada. Working in the tradition of American Landscape painting, he has complete over 100 paintings of these unique mountains, each based on his experiences along with the thousands of photographs taken for reference as he hikes and camps at elevations over 10,000 feet.

  • Sierra Nevada Mountains

    Sierra Nevada

    California’s Sierra Nevada mountains offer breathtaking scenery with towering peaks, majestic granite faces, and high-alpine lakes. For the past 25 years, Alan Sonneman has traveled over high mountain passes to the remote valleys and basins of the interior of these mountains, often for weeks at a time exploring the high alpine basins below the Sierra Crest. 

  • Alan Sonneman Art in Embassies

    Art in Embassies

    Alan Sonneman has had the privilege of contributing to the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program. In 2016, he was commissioned by the Department of State to provide three works for the lobby of the American Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Other works have been exhibited in or purchased for several other American embassies around the world.

High Sierra Landscapes