"Apples" still life in a realism style, Original artwork, 2013. Painting oil/canvas. Painting

As a child, Iuliia Kravchenko enjoyed looking through the colorful multipage Hermitage Museum Guide Book, full of art reproductions from the renowned museum, and through her uncle’s sketchbook, archived in the family library. Those vivid impressions of childhood, as well as her own progress in drawing, encouraged Yulia’s desire to become an artist. While a University student, Iuliia spent a lot of her spare time in the Hermitage and the Russian Museum. She was particularly inspired by the works of realism and the still-life paintings of the Dutch masters. Those paintings enraptured her with the thorough technique and the full perfection of the whole piece, as well as of each minor detail. They made her eager to paint equally realistic. That was why Iuliia undertook an original training course in the Art Studio of L.V.Kuvayev with a special focus on ‘academic’ principles of realisticart and the painting technique of the old masters. At the same time, Iuliia practices artistic photography. Her main passion is composing thematic still-lives. Sometimes, collecting items for those compositions takes months. It is deeply inspiring to see trivial items reveal their beauty highlighted by her photo or art. Yulia’s favorite masters are Pieter Claesz, Willem Claesz Heda and Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy. Yulia Kravchenko plans to collaborate with art galleries and participate in exhibitions. At present, she works in her own studio in St.Petersburg, Russia.