BIOGRAPHY

I was born in Kazakhstan, where art became my earliest means of expression. Long before I spoke English, I found comfort and escape in drawing. Around the age of fourteen, I was adopted and moved to the United States, entering an entirely new world of language, culture, and possibility. Through all of that change, the one constant in my life was art. That passion eventually grew into a path of study, and I earned my BFA.

As I developed my own artistic voice in college, I discovered how much I enjoyed sharing that creative process with others. That realization, combined with my lifelong connection to art, naturally led me into teaching. Today, I guide my students in discovering their own artistic voices while continuing to deepen and evolve my personal practice.

Outside the classroom, I focus on painting, especially large-scale realistic florals. My work has been exhibited in multiple galleries throughout the Denver metro area, and I continue to explore the emotional and expressive power of nature-inspired imagery.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Art has always been a quiet, grounding space for me, a universal language that helped me express emotions when I couldn’t yet articulate them fully. Growing up in Kazakhstan and later transitioning to life in the United States, I relied on drawing as a way to understand, communicate, and find comfort. That early connection to art continues to shape the way I create today.

My work is rooted in close observation and a desire to capture beauty in small, fleeting moments. I am especially drawn to florals for their complexity, subtlety, and the way light continually reshapes their form. Much of my process begins with photography. I take numerous images of real flowers at different times of day to study shifts in movement, shadow, glow, and reflection. These photographs serve as reference points that I combine and reinterpret as I paint, allowing me to explore the emotional range of a single subject across multiple moments in time.

Whether I am arranging my own still life or discovering inspiration while traveling, I am always searching for the perfect alignment of light and nature. Painting gives me the space to slow down, look closely, and translate what I see and feel into work that invites the viewer to do the same.