JAMES CHRISTENSEN
- IN PERSON -

Premiering his new book
"Men and Angels"
Thursday, October 23

THOMAS KINKADE
ANNUAL HIGHLIGHTING EVENT

Thomas Kinkade
THANKSGIVING WEEKEND
Saturday, November 29

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Images are copyrighted
and subject to price and availability. Image sizes
are approximate.
Artwork is MINT
unless indicated to the contrary.

Irene Sheri was born in the Ukraine in 1968 of a Bulgarian mother and French father. Her art career started when her older brother Vasily, then nine, was given a set of paints...and Irene was told NOT TO TOUCH THEM! Those paints became an obsession. She stole them, mixed them and painted on paper, on walls, on her dress and on the bodies of her friends. She was four.

At nine, with thousands of paintings behind her, Irene began art classes at the Belgorod Art School for gifted children, and at fifteen, she graduated from junior high and art school, both as valedictorian. As a student at the Grecov College of Art in Odessa, she entered and won a citywide juried exhibition "Young Artist of the Year." During her two years in junior college, she entered and won fourteen juried exhibitions, and at the end of her second year, received a special "excellence in art" award from the mayor.

At seventeen, she was accepted into the Serov School of Fine Art in St Petersburg, Russia. All paintings and sketches that she created during her three years of study at the college are now used by the faculty as samples of brilliant academic achievement. In 1990, Irene graduated valedictorian from the Serov College, and was asked to stay at the School of Fine Art to teach gifted children. Two years later, she entered the prestigious St. Petersburg Academy of Art.

In 2000, her graduation artwork was accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Academy of Art, and a year later, the same painting, "Early Snow" (78" x 80") received the highest honor an artist can receive in Russia, the "Russian State Award for Outstanding Achievement in Art or Entertainment".

Her works are now in prominent collections and sold in galleries in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Ukraine and Finland.