Olga Sheymov ART, Tower of Secrets V.Sheymov

Artist, engineer, television producer, Olga Sheymov paints in allegorical surrealism, infusing her artistic vision with philosophical and moral implications.

Having received her degree in Industrial and Graphic Design from Georgia Tech, she creates her art using different media including oils, watercolor and airbrush. Her allegories draw upon music, literature and her experience. Olga Sheymov’s paintings are found in private and corporate collections in the United States and Europe.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia under the iron fist of communism, Olga’s rich family heritage included several generations with artistic achievement.  Her parents, both graduates of architectural college, were stationed at a remote naval base in the Arctic Circle on the White Sea near Murmansk.

Olga was raised from the age of five by her grandparents in Samara. Olga was schooled in

classical ballet and piano.  She first performed on television at the age of eleven.  Often she was sent to perform at secret factories during lunch breaks and for the military in the evenings.  In school she was elected to various student organizations and even read articles she wrote on local radio station.                                                                               

At the insistence of her family Olga pursued her degree in engineering and worked at the Central Institute for Information and Patent Research in Moscow. Later Olga became a section chief at the Politechnical Museum where she gave lectures and did historical research.

During her first year in college she was approached by someone who asked her if she was prepared to sacrifice for her country, to include complete devotion to a career selected for her with no possibility for a family life.  This was her first direct encounter with the KGB.

The summer after graduation Olga was assigned to a Canadian delegation at the Student Olympic Games in Russia.  Here the KGB tried to push Olga into the middle of an espionage game between a Canadian spy and KGB operational officers.  She resisted and soon what seemed like a chance encounter, Olga met Victor Sheymov, a charming and resourceful young man who helped get her out of the threatening KGB situation.  Later she learned Victor worked in one of the top secret divisions of the KGB.  Their love story and eventual escape from the Soviet Union and the clutches of the KGB is described in detail in the book, 

Tower of Secrets, written by Victor and published in the USA.

Not long before their escape from Russia Olga’s mother, Ksenia, finally told her some of the family secrets.  It seems her great grandfather did not die from the flu and was really an officer in the Tsar’s secret service who was killed in the line of duty. It was hard to defy her motherland where she grew up, but it was harder to be loyal to a system that killed millions of people and brutally suppressed any thoughts of a free and open society. In time Olga and Victor made a decision to fight Communism and Olga had to learn the spy business firsthand in order to outwit their powerful opponent, the KGB.  Soon they decided that defecting to America would give them their best opportunity to oppose the ruthless Soviet Empire.

With the fall of communism in Russia Olga saw the opportunity to tell the story of the Russian people and their rich cultural history through television, and she created the award winning television series Russia Today.  This half-hour magazine show presents a unique and welcome opportunity to view Russians and Americans coming together to share and compare not only differences but similarities as well, highlighting our common humanity.