Stripes and Onions Painting

Dina Milovanov is a contemporary Canadian artist who works in the genres of figurative and abstract art. She is also a painter of custom portraits, which have received critical acclaim for their expressiveness and craftsmanship. Trained in the tradition of classical figurative painting at the San Francisco Academy of Art, in her work she combines a respect for the craft of the old masters with a conviction that realist art should not be boring. Her abstract paintings frequently touch on classical motives and explore how our cultural narratives and collective memory continue to shape our "radically modern" lives. In her figurative works, she attempts to reconcile the transience and contingency of everyday being with the idea of a portrait as a solemn look into posterity that is inherent to the form. Dina was born in Nalchik, Russia, where she passed her childhood in her grandfather’s painting studio and gained a lifelong love of oil and canvases. She moved to Toronto as an adolescent and, discouraged from a career in art as “not a real job”, graduated from the University of Ottawa with a degree in political science. Overwhelmed by a relentless urge to paint, she then ran away from “a real job” at the Prime Minister’s Privy Council Office to study fine art and launch her art career in San Francisco. She’s extremely pleased to be back home in Toronto and to be able to share her work with Canadian art lovers.