About the Artist

    I have painted in oil and pastel for the last 11 years. I have been teaching private students, and college classes, for the last eight years.  The blank canvas makes me believe that I can create the world I dream of, when I finish the painting. I encourage my students to think the same. 

   I was born in Lugansk, Ukraine, at the time of the Soviet Union in its prime. I had no formal Art education in Ukraine.  Russian Art History was part of my education in History at the University of Ukraine.

        I began the study of visual art in the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, in the fall of 2004, for my Masters degree.  In the summer of 2006, I went to Russia, to the most famous Academy of Art, by Repin, in Saint Petersburg.  I studied with Ivan Vituk and Konstantin Grachev in Saint Petersburg.  The opportunity to see the work of many Masters in the Academy’s museum and to study with young and talented Russian teachers, improved my ideas about the art that I want to create.

        My Masters in Fine Art is from the Academy of Art, San Francisco.

        I am a member of Oil Painters of America, where I participated in National Juried Exhibitions.

         At the present time, the style of my work is a mix of impressionism and realism, and perhaps my approach to painting will change in days, or years, but the major principals of painting: drawing, composition, values, temperature, light in color, and edges, will go with my brush.