Thane Gorek

Thane Gorek lives and works in Loveland, Colorado with his wife and two sons. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1995.

After graduating, Gorek chose to pursue painting, further honing his skills and refining his visual vocabulary. In recent years, his main focus has been on landscape painting. Gorek enjoys capturing the beauty and the mystery of natural places.

Gorek works with a unique painting style. Each new work of art begins with a black and white underpainting using gouache. Gouache is similar to watercolor in that the opaque pigment is mixed with a water-soluble binder. The paints are different as gouache is far more opaque than watercolor. It has larger particles of pigment, which makes it difficult for light to pass through the painting. Gorek uses gouache for all the minute details you see in his precise paintings. Before he adds colors, which come from oil paints, Gorek’s works are stunning renditions of the finished paintings, only done entirely in black and white. To add color, Gorek turns his oil paints into a glaze. Softening the oils allows for the black and white details he spent so much time perfecting to be ever present in the finished artwork.

As both gouache and oil are inherently opaque and resistant to light, Gorek has become a master at painting light within his finished canvases. Thanks to his painstaking detail work and control of light and shadow, Gorek has the ability to make his viewers feel like they are standing in the lush landscapes he chooses to paint.

Gorek’s work can be viewed in public at Raitman Art Galleries locations in Breckenridge and Vail, Colorado. His relationship with the galleries was ever fortuitous, as he was childhood friends with one of the galleries sales consultants. The quality and unique nature of his work immediately struck the Raitman’s. We invite you to get lost in his landscapes.