Irèn Kossintseva was raised in Russia and trained in an arts academy, attracting attention both locally and abroad through her award-winning work. She has had numerous exhibitions in Russia, and has also shown her work in Japan and Norway.

In Canada she works as a freelance artist, and is involved in multitude of community projects, including providing fine art education in public schools and at the University of Alberta.

Her focus revolves around the human body as the ultimate expressive medium in art. She explores the human condition through texture, color, line, and pursues capturing the external manifestations of internal psychopathology. In addition, she is interested in the expressive organic form of composite landscapes. This comprises the aesthetics of both the micro and the macro universes, and is influenced by shapes found anywhere from molecular science to histopathology and gross tissue samples, to primitive organisms of Mesolithic era.

 

Irèn Kossintseva’s meticulous study of the human body has resulted in the pursuit of a second field of endeavor: medicine. She balances both art and medicine, and finds that the two career streams compliment each other tremendously. In her opinion, medicine is an art and art is a science.

Her influences are diverse, including art of Egon Schiele and Joan Miró, writings of Albert Camus, Vladimir Nabokov and Leonard Cohen, films of David Lynch and Richard Linklater, medical texts of pathology and dermatology, and her day to day clinical experiences.