I have painted for the last 25 years, teaching privately and in college for the last seven years. The blank canvas makes me believe I can create the world I dream of after finishing the painting.  I try to 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 grew up in an artist’s family, my grandfather was a good sculptor, but I did not get to provincial art until I was older.  I began the study of visual art at the Academy of Art University in the fall of 2004, for my Master’s 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 possibility to see the work of many Masters in the Academy’s Museum and studying with young and talented Russian teachers improved my ideas about art.  I graduated with a Master’s in Fine Art from the Academy of Art, San Francisco. The subject of my work is people.  Most of my paintings are done from life.  At the present time, the style of my work is a mix of impressionism and realism. Maybe my approach to painting will change in a couple of days or a couple of years, but the major principles of painting: drawing, composition, values, temperature, light in color, and edges would go with my brush.