Olga Shirnina was born in Schwerin (former DDR). She studied at Moscow State Pedagogic Institute of Foreign Languages, where she received a Ph.D. in Germanisctic. Following her studies, she has worked as a professor of German at Moscow State Pedagogic Institute of Foreign Languages and that of Alma-Ata.

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She has worked on various significant translating projects from German into Russian and Russian into German and translated several books such as “VOL-Handbuch” by H. Lamm (German Legislation on State Trade, together with Y. Alekseyev), “A study of colour for florists” by Dieter Holzschuh and “Der Florist, Bd. 1: Gestaltungslehre und floristisches Gestalten” by Ingeborg Wundermann, Frauke Stobbe-Rosenstock (Designer-books publisher) and several books for Miele.

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Having a special love for arts, she started working as a picture colourist, producing her first work in 2011. Continuing, she published a website and a Facebook page with her colourings, which led her in receiving some significant commissions, such as the cover of the last book of Paulo Coelho about Mata Hari.

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Olga is fascinated by Russian history, which she finds full of dramatic, cataclysmic events, which not only had an impact on the history of the country, but also on the rest of the world. According to her, “Sometimes a picture can say more than many words are able to, and it gives me great pleasure to add to people’s knowledge and learning about Russia, through my work in colourings”. She also finds it interesting to work with colours, achieving different effects or copying the manner of great painters of the past.

 

​Olga has contributed to the “The Romanov Royal Martyrs Project” by undertaking the colourization of all the pictures of the project. In addition to her artwork, she has been able to locate most of the Russian archival material used for the project and has undertaken the transcription work of many handwritten manuscripts.