— an atelier of small hands
We paint the way Vincent painted —
with our whole heart.
Rainbow Art School began as one easel in one kitchen. Fifteen years later it is a room of easels, tall windows, and children who have discovered that a painting is never really about the thing you paint — it is about the way you looked at it.
— with love, from the studio
a letter to parents
"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream."
— Vincent van Gogh
When a child sits down at an easel for the first time, something in the room quiets. The question isn't can they paint — of course they can. The question is what they will paint only because they are the ones holding the brush.
Our teaching is patient, structured, and deeply traditional. We teach line before colour, observation before invention, and craft before style. But we never forget that painting is a wild, alive thing — the way van Gogh knew it. Every class ends with something unexpected on canvas.
And every child leaves with paint on their fingers.
meet the founder
Anna Beliavskaia
A Russian-trained oil painter and mother of two. Anna opened Rainbow Art School in 2011 because she couldn't find a place in the city that taught children painting the way she had been taught — slowly, seriously, and with real materials. Fifteen years and hundreds of young artists later, that is still the promise.
- · MFA, Repin Institute, St. Petersburg
- · Exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery Members' Show, 2019
- · Teaching young artists since 2003
what we believe
Three things, always.
Feeling first
A painting begins in the chest, not the hand. We start every class by asking what the artist wants to say.
Real craft
Oils, watercolour, charcoal. Stretched canvas. Sable brushes. Kids rise to real tools.
Your voice
We never paint over a child's choice. Guidance, never correction of vision.