Featured Artist: Kira Sokolovskaia

Meet out featured artist – Kira Sokolovskaia, a talented pastel artist, who worked at RUSART as an art instructor from 2017 to 2020.

Kira is from Moscow, Russia, where she graduated from Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry in 2011 with major in graphic arts. About the same time, she realized that her favourite medium was pastel, and her inspiring subject is beautiful nature around. She uses bold colours, confident lines, and applies no smudging. To create a more expressive look, Kira is working on sand paper (yes, regular sand paper that can be found at construction store). Dark tint of paper provides kind of outlines around colourful lines that make Kira’s drawings more impressive and eye-catching.

Kira is also a talented illustrator with a lot of books published. For her illustrations she is choosing mixed media practice, combining elements of collage, gouache painting, and drawing. Although she loves to paint with oils too, she finds pastels the great source of inspiration as a medium.

In 2013 Kira moved to Canada and settled down in Burnaby, BC, where she still resides with her family. She became a member of the Burnaby Artists Guild, Federation of Canadian Artists, and Pastel Artists of Canada. Kira participates in art exhibitions on the annual basis and provides workshops. She is greatly inspired by the nature of BC, trees and mountains. She loves  painting in open air and is sure that working outdoors is the best way to understand distance, color, volume of objects an artist wants to depict.

Kira loves to study and regulary watch lectures (and reads books) on science(evolution,biology), history, art history and archaeology. The best way to draw something is while listening to a scientific podcasts.

You can see her artworks at her website www.culufin.com , and illustrations at www.kiradraws.com