Oil paintings of cities
The same street is a different city by the hour.
I trained as an architect, so I read a city first as structure: proportion, mass, the way a facade holds the light. Then the day begins to work on it. The same avenue at dawn, at noon and after the lamps come on gives three different feelings, and I have come to think of a city as an emotional state that follows the light. I paint that state. Each canvas holds one place at one moment, with an architect’s eye for the structure and the color of that hour.
Irina Alexandrina
Paintings
New York
Low sun on an avenue, rain and lamplight, bridges at dawn and after dark, spring in the park.
London
Big Ben and Tower Bridge, the Thames embankment, a wet evening on the way to St. Paul’s.
Paris
Venice
The lagoon, the canals and St. Mark’s Square, in warm haze, at dusk and in the rain.
Flowers
Cityscapes and flowers are the two subjects I return to.
People
The city with a person in it: a red dress in the rain, a couple under one umbrella, a swing at the edge of the water.
About
Irina Alexandrina is a professionally trained architect. She earned her degree in the Architecture Department of the Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, in the Volonsevich studio, and now paints from her studio in Boca Raton, Florida. Her favorite subjects, cityscapes and flowers, come from a lifetime of travel.
Her paintings join classical technique to abstract expressionism and color field painting, in bright, ethereal color. She has taken part in more than 45 exhibitions since 1991, including solo shows in the United States, Germany, Italy and Russia.
“I would have expected to pay considerably more for artwork of this quality.”Artfinder collector, 2025
“Beautiful paintings… I love her work! I have 3 and I want to buy more!!”Artfinder collector, 2025
Solo exhibitions
- 2023Naples, East West Fine Art City Landscape. Naples.
- 2022Richmond Hill, Ocean Art Gallery Transformation
- 2021Texas, Whistle Pik Galleries
- 2020Florida, Gallery on Fifth
- 2020Florence, Gallery Ponte Vecchio
- 2019Vail, Colorado, Vail Fine Art Gallery
- 2018San Francisco, Gallery Russian Hill
- 2017St. Petersburg, Gallery of the bank Sankt-Petersburg
- 2016Berlin, Russian House Irina Alexandrina. Painting
- 2015St. Petersburg, Gallery of Grad Hotel Europe
- 2014Vail, Colorado, Vail Fine Art Gallery
- 2013Dresden, Institute of Literature Dresden – St. Petersburg
- 2012Dresden, Gallery of Deutsche Bank Irina Alexandrina. Painting
Originals
Each painting is one of a kind, signed on the front and ready to hang. More than 300 of my works are listed on Artfinder, where I have been a member since 2017.
Commissions
I take commissions. If there is a place that matters to you, a street, a bridge, a view from a window, I can paint it in oil at the hour that holds it best.
Tell me where it is, what time of day you have in mind and roughly what size, and I will write back to you myself.