Cristina Shirar

Cristina was born in Italy in 1947. She came to this Country in 1972 at the age of 25 to follow her American husband back to the States after his Air Force tour in Italy was over. After 35 years of living in the United States with her husband and their four American born children Cristina now considers America her adopted home.

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Since her youth, Cristina demonstrated remarkable artistic tendencies and was fortunate enough to have been under the tutelage of an art professor who happened to be a friend of the family. She continued to receive encouragement to pursue her artistic talent even though for many years she didn't quite believe in herself. To boost her self-confidence, Cristina attended classic oil painting as well as industrial poster advertisemt classes in Italy. However, her life-long occupation has taken her to the corporate world following her graduation as an industrial executive assistant. Among other places, she worked for the U.S. Army Adjutant General in Grafenwoehr, Germany, as well as in the corporate architectural sector in Tucson, Arizona.

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Cristina's children are now grown up and have families of their own. She and her husband are now retired, consequently she has been spending progressively more time pursuing her life-long desire to paint. Cristina has always enjoyed the process of transforming a blank canvas into a channel of self-expression. The process is often agonizing, to her, although in a happy and anticipatory way. She prefers to use oil medium because she enjoys the challenge of controlling the gliding interaction of the brush on canvas with oil based pigment. Often detail gives way to impressionism so that what is really enjoyed in her work is the overall striking effect. Artistic license allows this still growing artist to move freely between elements of fantasy and reality, often combining the two into a seamless show of effective rendition.

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The art showcased in this site is comprised of limited edition prints signed and numbered by Cristina and taken from her original oil paintings. The originals themselves are not for sale. However the print reproductions on canvas are as faithful to the originals in appearance and texture as possible. The poster boards prints are faithful renditions of the original, and come laminated for protection. At this time, Cristina doesn't offer framing as an option, although she hopes to be able to do so in the near future. Cristina's paintings and prints are showcased in private collections in the United States, Germany and Italy.

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