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Maria Danishvar Brown
Born 16 December 1975 in her mother’s home town Alexandria, Ukraine, Maria lived in her father’s native Kabul, Afghanistan for 5 years, before moving to Moscow in 1981.
She studied in Moscow at the “Art School Number 1” (1984-1992) and the Moscow Academic Art College (1992-1997), graduating as a painter and an art teacher.
Since moving to Bath from Russia in 1997, Maria quickly established reputation as a portrait painter and an art tutor.
Maria (known to her friends as Masha), taught a group of primary school children for a number of years, as well as tutoring adult artists, until she came to have her own children. Now that her children Nadja and Nikolai are both at school she has restarted her teaching and is running 2 after school art clubs at St.Mary’s RC school in Bath.
In England, Masha exhibited in Saddler Street gallery in Wells, since 1999, in private and charity exhibitions, at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and with the Bath society of artists.
Masha enjoys painting different subjects: flowers, still-life, landscape, but her favourite genre is portraiture. It is very important to her to get to know the model through observation in painting and express the uniqness of their personality by the means of the pictorial.
One of her favourite subjects is ballet and dance in general. Masha painted dancers since her youth and spent 2 years at the Bolshoi theatre in Moscow collecting drawings for her final piece. During her time in the theatre she also developed a great interest and love for opera and singing and went to study with the former Bolshoi soloist Alexander Petrov.
In the last 10 years, Masha and her husband Steve, who is a web-developer and a baritone, have been having lessons with oratorio bass Charles Hetherington, and have performed in a variety of song and Lieder concerts for charity and friends.
Masha and Steve have also sung with Bath Cantata and Bath Opera, and currently sing with Opera Piccola, a small group of singers who perform excerpts from opera in the Bath and West Wiltshire region. Masha is now studying with Rosa Mannion, an internationally famous soprano.
Masha is currently waiting for a studio to become available at Widcombe studios in Bath, and is hoping to start regular classes for adults and children. Meanwhile, she is also learning the ancient technique of icon painting, which is the tradition of her church, and will soon be available for icon commissions.
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