#saw this and my desire to redraw it has won

[vio-lenceee]

gale just knows morena and tara bought this billboard for him alright original meme under the cut

[steliosagapitos]

Irene Sheri Vishnevskaya

     Irene Sheri was born in the city of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, Ukraine, 1968, where, as a young child, her passion for art began.  It all started when Irene's older brother Vasily, then 9 years old, was given a set of paints for his birthday.  Irene was told that they belonged to Vasily and not to touch them! Those forbidden paints became an object of desire for her, almost an obsession, until finally she stole them from her older brother, mixed them and painted on paper, walls, on her dress, and on the bodies of her friends. She was 4 years old and had found her true love.

“I am in love with my canvases,” says Irene. “It is the beauty and passion of painting and the results that come from those feelings that drive me to fill the canvas every day.”

Like her obsession for art, Irene’s love for Disney began at an early age.  As a little girl, she formed a bond with Mickey Mouse and like many children she thought of Mickey as another childhood friend.  “It seems to me that we grew up together,” she says of Disney’s famous mouse, “I really believed that we were peers.”

   Despite the strong connection she felt with Mickey, Disney items were hard to come by in Russia during that time and the relative scarcity of a Disney toy made them very special items. “When I was young, if you had a sticker with Mickey on it, that was considered something fantastic! It was impossible to find them in our stores,” Irene explains. “The only way to get them was as a gift from friends or relatives who were athletes or sailors, since they were able to travel around the world.”

Luckily for Irene, her friend’s father was a Sea Captain and he had brought her a Mickey Mouse sticker from his travels.  The greatest gift!  She loved it so much she would redraw the Mickey artwork she saw on her sticker. It was at that point that her love for art and Disney merged for the first time.

  Irene would grow up to enjoy many successes and came to be recognised as one of Russia’s most gifted young artists.  Instead of attending a traditional high school, Irene was accepted at Grecov College of Art in the city of Odessa, Ukraine.  As a follow up to that, at age seventeen, she was accepted into the acclaimed Serov School of Fine Art in St Petersburg, Russia where she would later graduate as Valedictorian. After that success, her post graduation education continued at St. Petersburg Academy of Art, one of the most prestigious art schools in the world.

Today her award winning fine art is collected, exhibited and celebrated in a variety of museums and galleries around the world, and in a beautiful, poetic return to her own youth, she contributes to the Disney Fine Art collection with her whimsical portraits of children immersed in the joyful exploration of their own imaginations, the way young Irene Sheri, once did with her own childhood friend, Mickey Mouse.

  Born in the Ukraine in 1968, Irene Sheri is one of the brightest examples of a new breed of inter-cultural artists emerging from Europe. An accomplished figurative and landscape artist, Irene is inspired by Botticelli, Chagall, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Goya. However Cezanne and Matisse have made the deepest impact. Inspired by the “Russian Expressionistic Movement”, Irene is a Master of contrasts of light and shadow. Like Cezanne, Matisse and Gauguin before her, she embraces the use of color. If her objective is not reached, she begins anew, until the desired result is achieved.

Her paintings express her love of life, a toast to its wonder and beauty. Sheri’s talent and style were recognized at a global level in 2001 when she was awarded Russia ’s highest artistic honour on it’s 50-Year Anniversary - the “State Award for Outstanding Achievement in Art”, naming her as the “Best and Brightest” young artist in Russia; awarded to one woman each year for excellence in the arts.

Her works are in many important collections in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Canada and the U.S.  Ms. Sheri’s works are in the private collections of prominent Russian collectors, including musician Mstislav Rastropovich, ex-St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and oil tycoon Leo Vaisberg.

Ms. Sheri studied art at the Belgorod Art School for gifted children and at 15 became the valedictorian of both her junior high and art schools. From there she entered Grecov College of Art in Odessa, and in her first year, won a citywide juried exhibition and was honored as “Young Artist of the Year.” Irene would win 14 juried exhibitions in the next two years and receive a special “Excellence in Art” award from the Mayor. At age 17, Ms. Sheri entered the Serov School of Fine Art in St. Petersburg, Russia.  All of the paintings and sketches she created during her three years of study are now used by the faculty as samples of brilliant academic achievement.

In 1990, Irene entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Art, one of the most prestigious art schools in the world.  In 2000, her graduation artwork, “Early Snow,” was accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Academy Art when she was named valedictorian. The oil painting also received the “Russian State Award for Outstanding Achievement in Art or Entertainment,” the highest honor an artist can receive in Russia. This renowned school, created in the eighteenth century, has influenced many masters in its years of existence; all ambassadors of Russia’s art worldwide.

Her motto is: “Create a world that is totally yours that comes from within your own soul.”