Dorothy Ganek looks forward to creating something in her studio every day.
“Drawing and painting have always been part of my life,” says Dorothy. As a young child she drew constantly with precious red pencils on lined notebook paper, since supplies were scarce in the post-World War II years in her native Greece. At the age of ten, she migrated to the United States with her family. Trying to hold on to her roots and fit into new surroundings, she began to balance the two worlds through her art. “In my teens, I spent countless hours drawing fashion figures and designing fabrics that would make up their stylish outfits.” This passion with pattern and design led her to a career of Interior design for over 40 years, balancing with the love of being a wife and mother and now a grandmother.
Her strong desire to draw and paint never went away during those years and through selective workshops and training she expressed herself primarily in traditional watercolor. She entered many juried shows, winning numerous awards gave her signature status in both American Watercolor Society and National Watercolor Society. That gave her the confidence to pursue a professional art career.
Today her work has evolved into abstract expression, on large canvases directed by her senses and emotions rather than objects. Dorothy says, “It's the unexpected accidents that occur during the early stages that are the most intense and exciting, not knowing what direction the painting will take. It’s that mystery that keeps me going back into the studio."
Her compositions are asymmetrical with bold color and line as major components. She begins painting spontaneously, letting her intuition guide her to the next step, developing and refining until the work is finished. She makes signature marks with a variety of crayons, graphite and charcoal to initialize her surface before adding color. Collage elements, found papers or papers created by the artist are often added. “Robert Rauschenberg’s collages are a tremendous inspiration to me as well as Matisse’s color and the use of black as an element. Picasso’s abstracted objects have influenced how I simplify shapes in my work”, says the artist. Weaving shapes and textures from nature and everyday life, combined with imagination and childhood memories of her beloved Greece Dorothy tells her visual story. She finds time to maintain a beautiful garden and be creative in the kitchen that she considers to be another art form. Her imagery has been described as lyrical and poetic, conveying mysterious organic forms and surfaces.
She explores a variety of mediums until they are mastered, always looking for new challenges and materials to discover. She is a trained silver smith as well as a Hand-made paper fabricator that she uses to create books and sculptural pieces of art. She also became fascinated by the art of pop-up books and taught herself the art of paper engineering and creates intricate abstract art in a pop-up form. Ganek tries not to put limits on herself as an artist because she believes that freedom nurtures creativity. “I give myself permission to break all the rules while I’m painting and I constantly remind myself to enjoy the process”.