Welcome to the Ottawa Fine Arts Academy site!
Dear friends, parents and students! Our creative staff warmly welcomes and invites you to join us in our exciting journey, whether you come as a student, parent, spectator, or a friend and donor of the arts. We are glad to share with you our experiences, skills, traditions we represent, and our love for what we do. We full-heartedly believe in the ultimate value of art and its influence on the development of the soul, intellect, character, talent and the overall wellbeing of every child and adult.
This is not the first time that all major divisions of the arts – theatre, visual art, music and dance – are gathered together under one roof in order to create, work and have fun together, to foster the highest human values, to inspire new generations of connoisseurs of the arts, creative people, and artists of the future.
Our academy is so designed as to provide an environment, a fertile soil common to the diverse arts so our students can grow, cultivate new friends, be surrounded by like-minded people where healthy critique and support are offered freely, supporting the fullest engagement and natural competition with peers for the sake of greater art. We are hoping to give all our students an opportunity to find their unique artistic voice and the context to dedicate their time to it.
Following the best ideals and traditions of Russian and Soviet arts schools, in conjunction with North American and European performing arts traditions and values, our experienced teachers in the Ottawa Fine Arts Academy are ready to give their students solid skills in their particular art and instil the qualities of the “School” ( the method, that guarantees successful result) in any of the chosen disciplines among the arts.
The Ottawa Fine Arts Academy is proud of our selection of teachers who represent a wide spectrum of the arts and skill sets. All of them are highly accomplished in their teaching and performance careers.
Together we are committed to providing an exemplary guidance, education, support and encouragement to our students as well as their performances, interactive arts projects, arts camps, exam preparations, festivals, exhibitions and community events. We understand what it takes to raise an artist and want to give all our students their chance to become one.
Special Thanks…
I would like to thank our support team: Emily Chen, designer who created a great logo for our academy and was one of the first people who believed in this project and supported it, to a dear friends Andrei Aleksandrov and Anastasia Krachkovskaya – our website designers for working on this growing site and being patient with our teachers in their constant requests and complaints, to Wayne Irschick for his excellence in proper English grammar and our site edition work. Without our excellent teachers dedicated to teaching their arts and ready to sacrifice their time and energy, this academy would not start and survive our first year. I thank each one of them for their faith and dedication to this project.
I give many thanks to my mother, Galina Baksheeva, professor of theatre and speech in Far Eastern Arts Academy (Vladivostok Russia) for being my main inspiration and support for this big project, for being my example of complete dedication to her work of raising people to what they can be on stage and in life so they can carry on the truth, the light, the spirit and mastership of theatre performance and art of communication.
Without my husband Bruce Hardy and his unending support, encouragement and love this academy would not started. I appreciate his faith and wisdom as we build this academy together. I thank our little children for their patience with mommy and her project. Hope they will take lots of arts lessons in our academy and grow to love music, theatre, visual arts and dance as much as I do as well!
Kindly yours,
Anna Baksheeva