Valeriy Gridnev PS RP ROI was born in 1956 in the Urals, Russia. He graduated from Sverdlovsk Art College in 1980 before undergoing seven years of rigorous training at the prestigious St Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he was awarded the coveted Gold Medal upon graduation. In 1999, Gridnev relocated to Britain, and just a year later, he was honoured with the Frank Herring Easel Award at the Pastel Society Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London. His accolades continued, with the Arts Club Award at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition in 2006, and in 2012, he was awarded both the Alan Gourley Memorial Award for a painting of Outstanding Merit and First Prize in the publicly voted Stanley Grimm Award at the ROI.

Gridnev is a Full Member of the Pastel Society, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and the Royal Society of Oil Painters—an esteemed recognition that he shares with only one other artist across these prestigious institutions.

In autumn 2013, one of his paintings was selected for the front cover of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ brochure and featured on banners promoting the event. By 2014, his portrait commissions included notable figures such as Sir Michael Birt, the Bailiff of Jersey.

More recent commissions have included Lord Barnard, Sir Drummond Bone, Andrea and Ben Leadson and their children, the President of LSE Minouche Shafik, Peek Garlington and his family and Geoffrey and Anna-Louise Mansfield along with portraits of their three children.