Galina
Khabarova

Russia • Stavropol'skiy Kray • born in 1986 • artist

Biography and information

Born in Dushanbe (Tajikistan, exUSSR) Galina was surrounded by art at an early age: her father took interest in metal stamping, wood carving, sculpture and photography, constantly inviting home his friends — local artisans and artists — to work together and discuss art.

In the early 90’s, Galina moved with her parents to Russia, where her family settled in Stavropol after a series of moves. She was lucky to have a school and teachers who, very rare for that time, tried to give new skills and strongly supported the passion for art in their pupils, teaching them new art techniques.

After graduating from the Institute in 2004 with a degree in Advertising, Galina immediately plunged back into the creative world, starting with professional photography. In the late 2000s, she became a professional graphic designer and later started drawing commercial illustrations. Galina’s interest in calligraphy, with special preference to the technique of writing with a broad pen and expressive calligraphy with a cola pen, developed confident firm strokes and the method of working with paint by rubbing, determining her future painting style.

In 2017, finally realizing herself as an artist, she started painting, realizing a long-standing dream. Galina’s favorite technique is “rubbing” paint strokes into a dense multi-layer film, creating a complex colorful pattern that gives the completed picture a multi-dimensional depth and saturation, rhythm and direction, makes the paint “glow”, and the viewer’s eye — unconsciously feel movement. A favorite working tool is an ordinary plastic card that has sufficient and necessary size and flexibility. The artist also uses many other tools, both traditional (palette knife, brush) and unusual (pancake spreader).

Galina takes part in exhibitions — local, national and international, and continues to develop and expand her artistic style constantly searching for new ways and methods of applying paint to different surfaces.