With considerable expertise in the mediums of tapestry, water colors, acrylics and oil painting, Valeria Mravyan has excelled as a freelance artist in Ontario since 1990. Her work has been displayed at a variety of galleries as well as published through professional publishing companies, and prints of her original paintings and abstract landscapes are available for sale online. Furthermore, she is incredibly proud to have been able to show her work on Broadway and that several of her paintings have been housed in permanent museum collections.
Involved in the arts from an early age, Ms. Mravyan is incredibly grateful to her parents for their support in her endeavors. She embarked on her formal education at the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts, where she studied design, applied arts and textiles from 1970 to 1974, before joining the A.N. Kosygin Moscow State Textile University and graduating with a Master of Arts in 1982. After moving to Canada from her native Russia, she began her career working in a textile design studio, before deciding to forge her own path as a freelance artist.
Ms. Mravyan attributes much of her success to her passion for art, her patience and a genuine love of what she does. Furthermore, she cites the most important things she has learned over the course of her career to be never giving up and listening to the feedback she receives about her work. Crediting the simple freedom to create as an additional inspiration, she strives to cultivate a feeling of peace and quietness in her work in order to instill a sense of relaxation and peace of mind in her viewers.
Alongside her primary work, Ms. Mravyan has contributed her skills to a number of other professional and civic endeavors. Since 2013, she has been a donor to Visual AIDS, as well as a donor to the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada since 2015, where she also donated a number of pieces of artwork between 2016 and 2019. In an effort to remain up to date with developments in her field, she maintains professional affiliation with the Canadian Artist Group, the International Art Society and was recently inducted into the International Union of Artists of Estonia in 2020.
Born in Moscow, Ms. Mravyan was raised by a mother who was a writer and translator and a father who was a writer and artist. Married to her husband, Michael, for many happy years, they are together the proud parents of two children and grandparents to three grandchildren. In her free time, Ms. Mravyan enjoys reading, classical music, nature and history. Looking toward the future, she intends to continue painting and cultivating a legacy through her artwork.