Creating art is the key to my life. Creating art allows me to express my inner vision. Images flow from my imagination and come alive on canvas.
My work is a perpetual beginning. When I start painting I have no idea how the painting will end. Each piece is the result of an experimental journey in vivid colors, contrast, magic, movement and fantasy. Photoshop, ink and a brush provide the best translation to what I want to say. My paintings are windows to many of different emotions. Each painting has its own style and rules. Most of my inspiration is drawn from music, dreams, nightmares, rainy days and inner struggles.
When I was 3 years old, my father drew a dog for me. After that I would sit for hours, pen in hand, drawing. My grandmother thought my newly found “hobby” was wonderful, until I ran out of paper and she found my “murals” on her nice white walls! Although my career as a graffiti artist came to an abrupt end, my uncle, (himself who liked to draw), said to me; “I believe in you …one day you will be a famous artist.”
I was born in 1974 in the Ukraine. I spent my early teen’s years in Moscow, around bohemian artists of Old Arbat. I became very interested in psychology, particularly the process used by Freud to interpret dreams through drawing. I was also exposed to Symbolism and Surrealism, through the work of Salvador Dali. I had found new tools for expressing my feelings and emotions through the "dream-like" quality of surrealist writers and painters such as: Italian Giorgio de Chirico, the Russian Marc Chagall, French artists Francis Picabia and poet Paul Eluard, the Spaniard Pablo Picasso and the American photographer Man Ray.
I received a bachelor’s degree in Teaching and Education in Pushkin State University. Ten years ago I came to the United States and I went to the Academy of Art College in San Francisco . Currently I am pursuing a MA in Early Childhood Education at University Of Phoenix and and I work as a teacher of art program for Russian emigrants at the JCC of SF and I love to teach a pre-K . I am a new director of Adath Israel Preschool. Teaching has always been in my blood. My mother is my first and my best teacher in my life.
Once I asked her, "What do you like best about teaching?" She replied, "The excitement and satisfaction I feel when I am giving a little part of my heart to each of my students.
I have a wonderful opportunity to share my expertise, and at times, even my own personal perspective. What makes it significant is when my students embrace that knowledge and make it their own by applying it towards a creative endeavor, which results in something unique and innovative. It's at that magical moment when the student becomes the teacher and by doing so gives back a part of them self. To me, that's what teaching truly is: giving something back."
