Biography

Inna was born in Sergiev Posad, a town near Moscow, famous for its ancient St. Sergius Monastery (Troitse-Sergieva Lavra) with rich architecture and a great collection of Andrey Rublev icons.

She discovered passion for drawing and painting at early years by doing portraits of her friends and family. Her father provided a great support in all of her artistic ventures. An admirer of impressionism himself, he shared his interest in art with Inna and together they built a very impressive collection of art albums.

At the age of 10 Inna successfully passed entrance exams and was accepted to the Sergiev Posad Art School. It was wonderful and productive 4 years full of new experience. After completing the art school Inna continued studying watercolor painting with a noted artist from Sergiev Posad, Ivan Kharchenko for another year. As a great teacher Kharchenko had a huge influence on Inna’s style, her perception of art and her love for watercolors.

In 1988 Inna was accepted in Moscow Art University for five years Masters Program of Art and Graphics. It brought intensive studies of drawing and painting, art history and design with great teachers and famous artists. Inna presented her work in many students’ art shows.

After successful graduation from the University, Inna’s art career took a detour in to the world of computer art and computer graphics. Computers gained popularity in Russia at that time and she decided to try herself as computer artist. On one of the projects Inna worked under art direction of Roger Dean and Michael Kaluta while creating fantasy worlds for a computer game. It was a new exciting venture, which brought Inna to California in 1997. She worked in California as a computer game artist, creating beautiful CG environments while still painting watercolors, doing pastels and silk paintings in her free time.

In 2007 Inna decided to dedicate more time to painting and took an Ala Prima class at College of San Mateo, where she met a great teacher and artist Jim Smyth. Jim’s talented tutoring has inspired Inna’s rediscovery of oil as an art discipline. Jim’s presentations are always bringing exceptional conceptual clarity and deep insights into the nature of painting. Also Jim introduced Inna to a wonderful Plein Air painter Brigitte Curt, with whom Inna took a Sunset Plein Air workshop. Painting with Brigitte helped Inna to broaden her horizons. Brigitte’s work has been a great help and guideline for Inna’s new experiments. Jim and Brigitte both share Inna’s love for Russian Impressionism Paintings and encourage her to incorporate this style even deeper into her work.

In summer of 2007 Inna went to Idaho to study under famous American-Armenian artist Ovanes Berberian. Berberian’s passion for colors made a huge influence on Inna’s vision of art. His art rooted into deep Armenian and Russian traditions were in creative synergy with Inna’s art quest goals. Berberian’s workshop turned out to be a great source of inspiration. It also fueled Inna’s love for still life painting in particular, which was always her favorite genre.

Painting is the essential part of Inna’s life and she feels fortunate by meeting all these great teachers and artists along the way. Exposure to prominent artists and teachers helped her to bring the quality of her work to a new level. She continues exploring her impressionist approach to painting and believes that sunny California is the perfect location for this exploration.