Katya Belaia-Selzer

Katya set up the studio over 10 years ago specializing in the conservation of old master paintings and collection management. She acted as National Specialist Assistant Adviser on paintings conservation for the National Trust between 2017 and 2020. Prior to this engagement, Katya was invited to join a team of conservators on the Inspired by Knole HLF funded project conserving Knole's outstanding painting collection.

Katya is a regular conservator at Woburn Abbey, Broughton Castle, Museum of the Order of St John, The Royal College of Surgeons and The Huguenot Museum in Rochester. Between 2010–2018 she acted as freelance conservator for The National Portrait Gallery in London and The Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Katya began her career as an apprentice at the conservation and restoration department of the Foundation of Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva in Lisbon. She received formal conservation training from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2007–2010) where she was a National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Society (NADFAS) scholar. In 2014 Katya founded the UA-UK Cultural Heritage Initiative, which in 2016 received the Creative Europe Collaboration Development Award from the British Council for its work to provide CPD opportunities for Ukrainian conservators.

Elisabeth Petrina

Elisabeth Petrina is a freelance paintings conservator-restorer who joined the team in 2022. She trained at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge during which time she specialised in non-invasive analysis of paintings and preventative conservation. She has interned at Ebury Street Studio in London and the Studio of Marjan de Visser in the Hague.

In 2017 she undertook the conservation, restoration and historical research of a portrait of the Protestant Reformers for Lewis town hall. Her work and findings were presented to the public and published in 2018. Elisabeth has a BSc in chemistry from the University of Liverpool and a diploma in Fine Art from Exeter College.

Elisabeth has experience of treating modern and contemporary paintings using the Modular Cleaning Program developed by Chris Stavroudis, she has also taken part in the Cleaning of Acrylic Paintings (CAPS) workshop run by Dr. Bronwyn Ormsby, principal conservation scientist at Tate Gallery. Elisabeth is the conservation director for the Michael Garton (1935–2004, RWA) estate since 2019.

Valeriia Kravchenko

Valeriia Kravchenko joined the studio team in 2022. She is an icon painter and conservator-restorer with a Masters in the Conservation and Restoration of Easel Paintings from the Kyiv National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Ukraine and a Bachelors from the Lviv National Academy of Arts specializing in iconography. Valeriia is also the Patrick Lindsay Conservation Fellow at the National Gallery of London.

Parallel to her conservation training, Valeriia designs and paints original icons to commission, including the gilded plaster relief. Some of her works have been exhibited at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and the Kyiv National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture.

Through her passion for making art more accessible and inclusive, Valeriia has set up an icon painting course at the Sidur School of Contemporary Art & Design together with the Museum of Ukrainian Art, both in Dnipro, Ukraine, and is collaborating with various museum and design teams to make collections accessible to the blind and partially sighted. Valeriia is Katya's partner in the UA-UK Cultural Heritage Initiative since 2014.

Ahneta Shashkova

Ahneta Shashkova is a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust Apprentice at the Studio. She is a paintings and decorative arts conservator-restorer with a Masters in the Conservation and Restoration of Easel Paintings from the Kyiv National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Ukraine. She is a current PhD student of the Academy with a thesis on the materials, techniques and art historical context of the twentieth century Ukrainian icon painter Ivan Yizhakevych.

Ahneta is also a professionally trained Petrikivka painter: a traditional Ukrainian decorative painting style, which in 2012 was recognized by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine as a part of the intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine, and is included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Henry Selzer

Henry is Katya's husband and has been involved in the development of the studio, focusing on the business administration, documentation and photography. He is an IT professional with over 10 years experience of technical implementation, project and cost management in the financial services and healthcare sectors and is a director at West One Technical Ltd. in Harley Street, London.