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A snapshot
 As a Visual Arts Teacher, I have been providing lessons for children in Brisbane and Sydney since 2014.
Being educated in Visual Arts (7 years in Visual Arts School and 6 years in University) and having work experience in Graphic Design and Illustration, I decided to change my career in 2014 and to dedicate myself to developing children’s creativity and visual arts skills.
More than 5 years ago, an idea of developing art lessons for small 3 – 5 years old children had been implemented in Brisbane. Since 2014, more than 200 students leveraged on my author approach and enjoyed their study in visual arts through more than 800 lessons conducted in Sydney and Brisbane.
Apart from the studio, I have been working as a visual arts teacher in a language school since 2017 and also volunteered in Redland Art Gallery, Thornlands State School, and different public events.
Since 2017, I am also working on recording online courses in visual arts based on my author program and plan to make them available soon to a broad audience through this website.
When free from conducting courses, I love to spend my time with the family and to do my own creative work. I am a mother of two wonderful daughters who are very happy about mum’s passion to visual arts and leveraged a lot in their development from this. My beliefsI believe that academic knowledge is very important in visual arts as a basis. If you have basis, a field for experiments can be enormous. As a basement is important for the house, as roots are important for a tree, or as wings are important for a bird, the strong basis is important for any artist.
Even if you plan to make a career as an abstract artist, for inner confidence in yourself, for acknowledgement of the true artist in yourself, knowledge of basis is truly essential. Take a look, for instance, at early art works of Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian and other founders of abstract art – they all had a strong academic school, and only thereafter, years later, they had come to simple forms and colours, that was their non-simple way. When you pass this path by yourself, from basics to finding your own style, only then you can feel yourself professional. About my lessons
Lessons are delivered in the system, from simple to complex, but, at the same time, with fun and on interesting to children topics. Each lesson – peculiar challenge to children. I believe that only getting to know something new each time and overcoming difficulties, it is possible to make the true breakthrough in anything. The same is true for visual arts. I see that this is a thing that is truly working.
It is often in the beginning of the lesson, when I am telling which project we are planning to do today, I hear puzzled exclamations of children like “Is THIS what we will be doing? But how will we cope with this?” Nevertheless, we bring complex but interesting projects into life and students results is what steadily inspire. My storyI was born and grew up in Russia, in a creative family (my father – well known architect, my mother was occupied with fashion design), and I knew it from early childhood that my profession would be connected to visual arts.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to study in a strong artistic school during 7 years which I just adored. I spent sufficient time there after school (3-4 times per week, 3-4 hours daily) and learnt a lot. Thanks to parents and excellent teachers for that!  After finishing school, I started my study in the university and obtained a degree in graphic design and illustrating.
Later on, after working some time as a graphic designer, I have decided to slightly change the direction of my activity. I moved to Saint-Petersburg and worked in different companies as an illustrator and graphic designer with usage of computer graphics (what was an excellent school for me). I worked in game industry, package design, developed collections of toys and accompanying graphics for chocolate eggs. Some time later, I tried work of freelancing as an illustrator.  My husband and I with the elder child moved to Australia in 2012, a country that seemed to be distant and unknown that time. We lived in Brisbane where my second daughter was born in 2013. Another one was born in 2021. My older daughters are home-school educated, my little one always with me and also a “big helper”. 
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What do we start with working with my students is basic knowledge. Of course, lessons are built with account of age particularities of my students, but the main purpose of my lessons is to make every lesson a step forward on the way to the basic knowledge necessary to every artist.
Founding the Art Studio
After my second daughter was born, I was motivated to organise a club with mums, acquainted with me, so that to meet periodically and to do something interesting with small children, by our own forces, on different topics. In the scope of this club, I had conducted a few free art lessons for the children. I have to acknowledge it was thrilling to start but everything went well and parents asked me to continue in a permanent format.
At that time, I had nothing for organizing first lessons, except the desire, and we started our first lessons with kids literally on the grass setting up a gazebo and a table at our backyard.
After 3 terms’ work, we had to relocate to Sydney due to my husband’s work arrangements where I continued conducting visual arts lessons. I started working with elder children, and then with adults as well, continuing to do that in Sydney during 3.5 years.
We moved back to Brisbane in October 2018 and I resumed the lessons in May 2019.
Volunteering
In addition to lessons in the studio, I worked and continue working as a volunteer in different organizations such as a kindergarten (pre-school) and a primary school that my children attend, in the Art Gallery. Also, I worked as a visual arts teacher for bilingual children in a language school in Sydney and continue working in a language school in Brisbane.
Golden mean
Having experience of life in two countries, I see a difference in educational systems.
My 14 years’ experience of visuals arts education in Russia shows that Russian schools are, indeed, very strong academically but have their drawbacks too: tasks for children can sometimes be boring, marking system and push on students often gives an opposite effect, development of creativity is often not in the first place, maintaining belief in yourself and enjoying the creative process… – many even didn’t hear about that.
I like that education in Australia is delivered merrily and in easy playful format. Lessons are composed in a way to make anyone achieve results, teachers encourage students and, in case of failure, always remind that making mistakes is normal in the learning process. At the same time, it is not easy to find lessons on drawing, visual arts, and composition for children in a serious format.
In my lessons, I try to keep a happy medium of these two approaches. I build lessons in a way so that students are always interested and not getting bored, always encourage and support children but, at the same time, do so that children elicit benefit from each lesson and can further utilize knowledge obtained.
About creativity
My main talent – creativity. This is also a quality that I try to nurture and maintain in my students. I can assign one task to everyone but try to do so that each child gets a unique work in the end. I don’t set strict boundaries (maybe only behavioural) and always encourage if children want to realize the same topic in different ways. Some topics that we work on are free but may have a common idea and implementation technique. Results of such works are always the most interesting and non-predictable. I use a unique program on my lessons that I developed, each lesson is designed by myself, from the beginning to the end, providing an opportunity to experiment with different techniques and materials.
As futurists predict, creativity is one of non-numerous and the most important qualities for a human of future. In the present though, this is also a highly and highly useful quality.
About pleasure from a process
I believe that obtaining pleasure from the process is as important and, in some cases, even more important than attaining a result. This can be a kind of meditation and also have a healing effect. It is important to everyone to believe in yourself, to see that he or she can create something incredible by their own forces, especially in childhood. In this regard, support and encouragement from parents and teachers can significantly influence on a child’s self-esteem in the future.
On my lessons for adults, I often see people who are actually grown up children remembering negative experiences from their childhood related to painting (bad markings in school for creativity or criticism from close people, reproach for dirty hands or spilt paints), who have given up these activities for many years but have not lost a hope to try again.
I see how dreaming talents are revealed and people obtain “wings behind the back” in the creative process due to the support and motivation from my side. Not rarely, even one lesson can inspire so much that a person buys materials, starts dedicating time to creativity and creates! It is so inspiring to myself as well – to bring back a belief in yourself to the “grown up children”. With children, I do everything so that they won’t lose this belief.
Below is one of the artworks from a master-class on intuitive painting for adults. My student, without experience, caught the necessary mood and has created a true masterpiece shocking everyone including herself. Most important, this has become a beginning of serious passion to painting.
About achievements
My students participated in different exhibitions and took prizes at Australian and International contests. Please, read more information here…
Currently, I am not focusing on participation in contests as the reverse side of this participation may be a children’s disappointment in their abilities as they don’t know how to lose easily and can’t adequately take a failure. At the same time, if I get to know about opportunities for talented students, I provide information about that to parents. In this case, we can try to participate, provided a child is ready to any outcome – as there is no unified scale of appraisal in visual arts and a result can depend on numerous factors.
Below is one of awards attained at the international contest of drawing “Draw me peace”. The award ceremony took place in Bourbon Palace (Palais Bourbon) in Paris.
My goals and tasks
My main task – to give children the most necessary knowledge in visual arts which will help them thereafter to bring into life any of their projects. Also, apart from knowledge, one of my main tasks is to make sure that students get a big support, pleasure, and only positive emotions from lessons, and, finally, come to love the creative activities.
Inspiration
Children’s results are always amazing, and amazement is that thing which is always inspiring. Creating activities have no borders and limitations, sharing the knowledge and experience in this area helps to self-express the personality.
About Fairy Bird Art Studio
Ksenia’s Contact Details
E-mail: fairybirdart@gmail.com , info@fairybird.com.au
Phone: 0426949189 (within Australia), +61426949189 (outside Australia)
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