We are an artist couple, Vyacheslav (Slava) Shevchenko and Diana Bekkerman. Our story is unique.

Slava spent over fifty years of his life in Uzbekistan where he had a lot of  success as an artist and a teacher. His paintings still hang in the National Museum of Uzbekistan.

Yet he decided to radically change his life at the age of 54, and he came to US, where he had to start everything anew.

We met when I became Slava’s student, taking private art lessons with him. I was blown away by his intensity as a teacher, I wanted to absorb all the knowledge he could give. He was teaching me not only to paint, but first of all, to see. To see and become ecstatic about what I see.

I was studying with him for about half a year when he proposed me to marry him. I was surprised at first, but I felt that we have a lot in common, so I said “yes, let’s try it”.

Now, six years later, we’re still together, and I feel that the choice I made then was the best choice in my life.  Slava is my mentor and my soul-mate. His example inspires me to go higher and higher in my work. We look at the world through the same eyes, although each one of us has his own direction.

At home, we speak Russian.  Slava communicates to English-speaking audience mostly through me. As he often says - his primary language is painting.

Our goal is to share with you, our viewers, the beauty that we see around us and express in our works. The beauty that is joyful and vibrant at times and quiet and meditative at other times. There are so many states that can’t even be expressed in words but exist in paintings.

We also want to share with those of you who study art Slava’s unique knowledge of drawing and painting. In his 20-year career as an art professor, he developed an extremely effective method of teaching art. (I experienced that method first-hand as his student). It’s mostly experiential - that’s where the video becomes handy.

So enjoy and experience us through our works, articles and videos.