The foundation of Gary Zack’s artistic life has always come back to color.
Across stained glass, hot glass, and now painting, color has remained the thread running through every stage of his work. In his early stained glass pieces, it was central to the design itself, from sparse, contemporary compositions to more intricate figurative work. That same fascination eventually led him to hot glass, where color could be blended and pushed in ways that flat, cold glass could not. Today, his paintings continue that exploration in another form, giving him room to work with light, contrast, texture, rhythm, and mood on canvas, paper, and board.
Born in Chicago in 1950, Zack is a self-taught artist whose career has moved fluidly across disciplines. While many first knew him through his years in glass, his current painting practice feels less like a departure than a continuation. The same sensitivity to color, surface, and light still leads the work, only now translated through oils and acrylics into compositions that feel atmospheric, tactile, and deeply personal.
That long arc is especially meaningful in Saratoga Springs, where Zack and his wife Dianne became well known through Pane in the Glass on Van Dam Street and later Symmetry Gallery, the contemporary glass gallery they founded in 1990. For many in the area, those spaces were an introduction not only to Zack’s work, but to a wider world of stained glass, blown glass, and fine craft.
Today, his studio on Bolster Lane carries that history forward. Stepping inside, visitors are met with the traces of a long interdisciplinary career, evidence of the years in glass and an equally clear sense of where his focus rests now. The studio feels both lived-in and active, grounded in experience but centered on painting. His current studio address is listed at 18 Bolster Lane, Saratoga Springs.
Recent bodies of work make that evolution easy to see. Zack’s painting practice continues to explore the same questions that shaped his glass career, especially how color can create mood, define space, and carry the structure of a composition. On his current site, that includes floral, forest, water, figure, and Adirondack series, along with continuing references to blown glass in his broader body of work.
What continues to distinguish Gary Zack is the way one medium informs the next. The stained glass artist, the glassmaker, and the painter all remain present. Each chapter has expanded the possibilities of the others, but the central interest has stayed remarkably consistent: how color can shape feeling, depth, and visual intensity.
For collectors drawn to work with richness, atmosphere, and a strong sense of surface, Zack’s paintings offer a compelling continuation of that lifelong pursuit.
