About the author: Galina Ivanovna Raspopina was born in 1957 in Buguruslan, Orenburg region. Graduated from Buguruslan oil technical college in 1976 with honors and entered Irkutsk Polytechnical Institute the same year. Graduated from the institute in 1981, Galina worked in a municipal construction organization – “Irkutskzhilstroy” in a position of engineer. Galina had vigorous career in construction business, but was always willing to gain new knowledge, new contacts and to be promoted. Since 1987, Galina started to work in Irkutsk Regional Executive Committee (at first Governor of Irkutsk Region Yuriy Nozhikov) in a position of department manager in the regional estate management administration. In 1994, by incredible concourse of circumstances Galina was diagnosed a grave illness. She was under treatment, hoped for comeback (she had small children), but became invalid for life.
Galina understood that she should continue living with her disease faith worthy and with a keen interest in life. Her children studied in art school, she observed their studies and wanted to paint by her own. Painting was her cherished dream over a distance of 10 years. She asked art schoolteachers to teach her to paint, but instead of painting, needlework was offered to her.… In 2006 Galina occasionally met with a famous Irkutsk painter Sergey Zhilin and he agreed to teach her to paint. During almost 10 years, Galina persistently learnt the ropes of artwork. The initial purpose was art-therapy, but further on, with the approval of the great Irkutsk painter Vitaliy Smagin (his artwork serves as an example for Galina), she started to take the artwork seriously.
With the purpose of a personal growth, in 2015 Galina entered the Irkutsk Technical University on academic chair of monumental painting, bearing the name of V. Smagin (the teacher was N. Dovnich), and in parallel, started her study in the Additional Education Institute at Irkutsk State University for the program of “Fine and Decorative & Applied Art” (teachers – A. Vesnin, E. Gladkikh and N. Sokolov). In 2017 Galina defended her diploma work with honors: «Painter’s sources of inspiration”; Chairman of attestation commission – Honored Painter of Russia A. Shipitsin.
Galina’s artwork had begun from penchant for pastel. However, one day, during skiing in snowy forest, Galina was eyeing with curiosity the bark of old birches, and patterns on the bark enchanted her. She asked herself – how to paint it on the picture and show people. A simple solution was to take brush and oil. Sergey Zhilin gave Galina all skills for oil painting, as well as imparted to a stylized painting and love to colour, nothing of natural, but lots of pure color, strive for doing all around beautiful. Galina combined the images that she saw on the birch bark, with oil colours. Thus, the series of artworks “Conversation with Flora” had appeared.
Initial construction education made impact on the artwork of the painter, and she created the series of works “Conversation with Stone” which have art and application purpose.
Still-life paintings were done under impression of meeting with wonderful teacher N. Dovnich, her works inspired Galina for landscape painting. The teacher A. Vesnin, the great master of academic painting, who paid attention to decorative-flat character of Galina is painting, considered unnecessary to retrain her and she is very grateful to him for this.
Her impressions from family evening gatherings by the fire Galina showed in the series of pictures named “Conversation with fire”.
Beginning from 2015 Galina has been taking an active part in public art exhibitions. The exhibition visitors see powerful spirits in her artworks, festive mood, colour that “achieves the heart», life-affirming colours with high purity (as if they “cut the feelings up to the very deeps’), individuality and free will in expression, courage, joy and light, rich imagination, freshness, very complex saturation of colours, imparting the pictures with artistic enchantment, emphasis and expression, brightness, inspiring and improving the mood.
Author’s creed: spontaneity and imagination, compositional improvisation, free will in showing creative world perception, independent from ideological opinion – this pretty much corresponds to philosophical-aesthetic criteria of contemporary art.
