 Hello! I’m Daria Riabinina. I was born in 1988 in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Since early childhood I somehow knew what I was going to do in life, I remember it clearly. If I saw a painter on plein-air I knew I should not come to peek and disturb him. The artist was in his own world, nobody should ruin his concentration. While other girls were drawing princesses for kindergarten festivals I used to draw the Hermitage surrounded by colorful fireworks. Nobody appreciated my creative work then, which unfortunately happened time and again since. Still, I knew I had to be a painter, so in 2005 I successfully passed a competitive entrance examination to the Saint Petersburg Art School named after Nicholas Roerich. That year master B.V.Lesov took new students to his group. It had shaped some parts of my creative way. In spite of being strict and sarcastic and the limited amount of the jokes he knew (quite terrible ones by the way), he had a profound personality. And his art had a thoughtful quality, the spirit, and warmth of the Russian countryside which I picked from him too. My first truly heartfelt works in my student years were paintings depicting mountains and alpinism. These were the things that captivated me back then. No wonder my graduation work was “The portraits of the alpinists”. Upon graduation, I immediately started preparing to enter the Academy of Fine Arts. It was no easy feat and took a year of dedicated hard work. In summer 2011 my dream came true: I have entered the faculty of painting of the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting. Life in the Academy can be called anything but boring. It is the eternal pursuit of something ethereal. 6 years of course exhibitions, plein-airs in different parts of Russia, copying masterpieces in the Hermitage, and meeting extraordinary people. In short, it is the time when you live and breathe art… and the same dusty damp air true masters of the past had breathed a hundred years ago. I studied under master X.V.Savkuev, a terrifyingly energetic man who evoked in me love for the depth of thought in a painting that I had never deemed possible. Under his tutelage, I paint pictures that vary in theme and color form subdued grays and browns to extremely bright almost mosaic bursts of color. During this period I created my favorite paintings about my family that became the foundation for my final graduation work “The family portrait. An old photo”. Several generations of my family, people who lived in different times are gathered in one painting. About a hundred years in one work starting with the beginning of the 20th century and up to me and my niece in modern times. It is the transition of an old black-and-white scratched photo into a colorful modern one that does the trick. Next came my private teaching practice and work in the bespoke printing and décor agency the Fancy Paper Studio. It seems every step on my way, every new period teaches me something new. The work ate the printing studio roused in me the taste for watercolor which stayed with me ever since to bring to life colorful Spanish landscapes. Nevertheless, painting in oils is the true love of my life. In summer 2019 I moved to Spain where I continued to pursue my creative career. Every part of the world has its own colors and Spain is so bright and intense you cannot help painting it. My art is multifaceted in themes and colors but at the core of it, there is always warmth and coziness my every painting is full of.
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