Katerina Pravda

Katerina Pravda is madly passionate about animals, their conservation, and their equality in our modern world. In her art, she often combines people and animals as one being in order to surprise, delight, and compel you to see animals in an exciting, new light. She hopes that through her art you see and recognize the innate similarities in us all, and understand our deep interconnectivity with animals and our environment. This is crucial to the implementation of new habits, paradigm shifts, and laws to protect endangered species and their habitats, and to ultimately progress towards a sustainable future.

Katerina’s work is easily recognized for her signature elements of sophistication, boldness, and expressive brushwork. She works in a variety of mediums including oil paint, ink, watercolor, graphite, and mixed media. All of her work paints the stunning souls of people and animals, showing their thoughts and emotion through the eyes, and often, through movement as well. Katerina’s work has been widely celebrated, winning her the prestigious Murray Jacob Clerkson Award in 2015. You can find many of her pieces gracing gallery walls and private collections across Canada and the world, as well as features as covers and spreads in a variety of high-profile magazines and publications — most recently, she was featured in Vegan Life Magazine.

Katerina Pravda graduated with distinction, earning a BFA in 2013 from Mount Allison University, Canada’s top undergraduate university. Additionally, she studied abroad at the University of Newcastle in Australia in 2012, where her artwork found a new sense of freedom and bold expressiveness. This is also where Katerina’s initial concept for her surrealist pieces took form, in the shape of the iconic piece “Don’t Strip Me Of My Stripes”.

Katerina has recently signed with Galeria Pura Vida in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, and will be premiering new works at the gallery opening this September, 2021!