Dina Brodsky facts for kids

Dina Brodsky (born 1981) is an American artist known for her incredibly detailed miniature paintings. She paints in a style called contemporary realism, which means her art looks very lifelike. She is also very popular on social media, with over 990,000 followers on Instagram. Her art is shown at the Garvey|Simon gallery in New York.

Life and Career

Dina Brodsky was born in Minsk, Belarus. In 1991, her family moved to the United States, and she grew up in Massachusetts. She went to college at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the New York Academy of Art.

Besides creating her own art, Brodsky has also taught art. She has worked at places like the Brookline Center for the Arts and even the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art. She lived in New York City for many years before moving to Boston in 2019.

Major Art Projects

Dina Brodsky is famous for creating series of paintings that explore a single idea. Each series shows her amazing skill in creating tiny, detailed worlds.

Bird by Bird

Brodsky started a worldwide art project called "Bird by Bird" using her popular Instagram account. She asked photographers from all over the globe to send her pictures of interesting birds. She then painted these birds with amazing detail.

The paintings are very small, some as tiny as 1.5 by 1.5 inches. When you look at them up close, you can see every tiny feather and detail. They look like tiny, precious jewels.

About this project, the artist said:

Many years ago, I fell in love with Islamic miniatures, as well as medieval manuscript illumination... My fascination with birds has primarily come from personal experience... Birds have been appearing in my paintings and sketchbooks ever since I started painting... This project is based on a Pablo Neruda quote that says, “bird by bird, I learned to know the earth.” To me, it is a way of discovering the world through a single window.

One More Shelter

"One More Shelter" is a series of small paintings Brodsky began in 2012. For this project, she traveled across the United States to find and paint abandoned buildings.

The paintings show messy, decaying rooms. This connects to her own family's experience of leaving their home in the former Soviet Union. The decay in the paintings is contrasted with signs of hope, like birds or sunlight coming through broken windows.

Cycling Guide to Lilliput

In 2013, Brodsky went on a long bicycle trip by herself through Northern Germany. While she was there, she created a series of paintings called "Cycling Guide to Lilliput."

All the paintings in this series are on tiny, round panels that are only 2 inches across. These round paintings are called tondos. In this series, Brodsky used old painting techniques from the Northern Renaissance to paint modern German landscapes.

The Secret Life of Trees

In 2016, Brodsky used her social media pages on Facebook and Instagram to start another project. She asked her followers to send her photos of trees that were special to them, along with the stories behind the trees.

Using these photos, she created over 100 drawings of trees for a series called "The Secret Life of Trees." The drawings are small, some created only with a ballpoint pen, while others were painted with oil paint.

Working as a Curator

Besides being an artist, Dina Brodsky is also a curator. A curator is someone who organizes art exhibitions. She has put together several interesting shows.

• Point of Origin (2015): For this show, 50 different artists painted on their own painter's palettes. A palette is the board an artist uses to mix paint. The show included works by artists like Steven Assael and Alex Kanevsky.
• Palette (2017): This was a second exhibition of paintings on palettes, held at a gallery in Denver, Colorado.
• Sketchbook Vol. 1 (2019): This exhibition showed 14 sketchbooks from 14 different artists. Visitors could look through the sketchbooks to see how artists develop their ideas.

Charity Work

Dina Brodsky uses her art and her large online following to help others and raise money for good causes.

Blue Review Art Prize

Brodsky runs a popular Instagram page for artists called "Blue Review." In 2021, she created the Blue Review Art Prize. Through this prize, she raised $15,000 for the charity Feeding America, which helps fight hunger. She also awarded $10,000 in prizes to artists who participated.

Birds for Sofia

In 2020, Brodsky started a campaign called #BirdsforSofia on Instagram. It was created to help a baby girl from Russia named Sofia, who had a serious disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). The medicine to save her life was very expensive.

Brodsky asked artists to share pictures of their bird artwork to raise money and awareness. The campaign went viral, and thousands of artists joined in. In less than a month, they raised enough money for Sofia's medicine. "Birds for Sofia" is now a non-profit organization that helps other children with rare diseases.

Private Collections

Many famous people own paintings by Dina Brodsky. Her collectors include HRH The Prince of Wales, Kip Forbes, Brooke Shields, and members of the Guggenheim family.