Art is a tough calling to pursue, but with the art market in a buying frenzy, Cinderella stories of young artists who find their works in major museums and influential galleries — think Dana Schutz, Banks Violette and Ryan McGinley — aren't uncommon.

O'ahu-born Micah Ganske, 27, is living his own art fairy tale. Last Saturday he attended the opening of his first solo show — at Deitch Projects, one of New York City's hottest galleries (it represents Jonathan Borofsky and Ryan McGinness).

His mom, dad and Auntie Paula and Auntie Renee flew out for the event. "It was really nice," Ganske said by phone from New York. "Afterward we had a dinner party at a nearby French restaurant and then we went to a karaoke place until 5:30 a.m."

As a student at Punahou School, Ganske tried out all the art offerings. "The only thing I found I was terrible at was glass blowing. For painting ... at no point did I have to use dangerous tools." Ganske also liked ceramics. "My grandmother, Rachel Chun, still has all of my thrown pots."

But early on Ganske had no designs on fine art. "All I was interested in was computer animation or making movies or video games," said Ganske, although he reveals he went to The Contemporary Museum. "I loved the David Hockney room."

He credits Punahou teacher Pete Hansen with turning him on to painting. "I never thought about making paintings until I took his classes," Ganske said. "He pushed me to make paintings and as soon as I started making paintings on my own, it felt like what I was supposed to do."

Still, he enrolled in Florida's Ringling School of Art and Design as a computer animation major, because "I was still trying to please my parents. They've always been super supportive, (but) I wanted to rest their minds a little and get a normal job of some kind."

GAMER TO FINE ARTS

Once in art school, Ganske found that he was happiest in painting classes that let him "do my own stuff." So he transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a painting major. That's where he met his second influential instructor, the late painter Donald McFadyen.

"After making the choice to be a painter, he was the best person I could possibly meet," Ganske said. "He was really supportive, and at the same time he was this cranky Scottish guy. I'd show up and he'd say, 'Yeah I guess this is OK, but why don't you just stop sucking so much.' That was exactly the sort of tough love I needed to push me."

As a senior Ganske confidently applied to "all the graduate schools you're supposed to apply to" — and didn't get into a single one. "No one told me what a portfolio is supposed to be like," Ganske said. Instead of presenting a body of work, "a theory-looking thing," he picked and chose a figure drawing here, a painting there.

"I was pretty depressed," he said. But instead of succumbing to defeat, he enrolled in a post-baccalaureate program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Ganske worked on a thought-out series and "I got into almost all the schools I wanted, with the exception of Columbia." He chose Yale, whose history as an incubator of top-tier artists includes Richard Serra, Eva Hesse and, more recently, Matthew Barney and John Currin.

It is at Yale that Ganske met his fairy godmother — the painter Kurt Kauper. "I've been really lucky," Ganske said. "There's always been one or two professors who were totally supportive. That's all that you can really ask for, one professor you can really relate to."

Kauper is also part of the Deitch Projects stable, and in 2005 recommended that gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch see Ganske's work in a group show in Chelsea, Manhattan's art district. Deitch took the advice and bought Ganske's painting at the opening. "It was a very Cinderella night," Ganske said. Deitch later told Ganske to call him once he moved to New York. "I did and he said he wanted to work with me," said Ganske. Bippity boppity boo.

The gallery has nurtured Ganske, giving him an advance and letting him use a studio space in a Brooklyn.

STRONG WORK ETHIC

Ganske's painting technique is laborious — he says he can complete only four to five paintings a year. Up to now, he has preceded actual painting with a "study" that he does in Photoshop — which itself could take up to two months to complete.

"I'll get the idea for the image, then I'll go on a photo research trip wherever I think I can get the right shot, then I make a photo collage in Photoshop," explained Ganske. (In 2005, he won an Adobe Design Achievement Award for digital photography/imaging; the winning image was published in the New York Times.)

Part of the reason he spent such a long time on the study was "for a while I thought it would be possible to sell the print for extra cash, but Jeffrey nixed that idea," Ganske said. "He was like, yeah, that'll ruin the mystery of the painting." He now plans to reduce his Photoshop time.

The paintings are marked by a ghostly quality, the colors pale and luminous. He applies diluted acrylic paint directly on unprimed muslin. "It sort of started out as laziness, because I didn't want to stretch, but then ... that way of painting just came naturally to me. It's been a slow process of honing and developing technique that goes with it."

"It's all stain painting. ... It gets that very light quality to it." Once completed, he varnishes a painting's front and applies several layers of medium and gesso to the back, "so it sort of becomes a hard plastic."

He mounts the works with pushpins and double-sided tape, so that the paintings "become like a seamless part of the wall. They feel much more like windows into the painting."

The works tell mysterious stories, with a feeling of impending doom or, in Ganske's words, "a morbid sense of humor." He cites the Prius in a flooded evergreen forest. "The environmentally friendly car caught in the environmental disaster," he said. Another example is his landscape of the Chinese cemetery in Manoa, the rows of tombstones echoing the rows of luxury homes behind them.

Does Hawai'i figure in his work much? "I was always an indoor kid. I guess that goes with the arts, not liking sports and all that," Ganske said. "I never would've thought that I'd be making so many landscape-oriented artworks. I guess after being gone, I've found my own way to appreciate my homeland."

To prepare for "Pictures Last Longer," Ganske holed up in his Long Island City studio for days at a time, working nonstop since last October.

"The most complicated painting in my show I spent about four months on. And that was like 70- to 80-hour weeks," said Ganske. "I've only been going home like one to two times a week. ... and I don't have a shower in my studio. I've been taking bird baths in the bathroom."

Ganske said life post-exhibition opening isn't easy. "Today is my first day off. So it's been sort of hard to not work. I've got ideas floating in my head, and part of me wants to start pushing ideas around in Photoshop. ... I've got my Chinese work ethic." (He is the grandson of Robins Shoes founder Paul Kwai Tung Chun.)

But, with the help of his fiancee, Colette Robbins, also a painter, "I'm going to try relax."

Reach Lesa Griffith at lgriffith@honoluluadvertiser.com.