When Kristina was a young girl, her family emigrated from England on a ship full of teachers
and their families, landing in Montreal after a two week journey and then boarding the train to
be dropped off all across Canada. The Boardmans landed in Lethbridge Alberta, which was quite
a change from England. After a few years on the prairies, the family moved to Vancouver
Island. Her parents insisted the five children each bring home two books from the library every
week. Kristina’s choices always involved art, from books on learning to draw to stories about
artists from around the world. She would find any excuse to add a drawing to a school project
and spent much of her spare time making things.
Kristina’s fascination with the west coast is evident in her paintings. She is intrigued by the
array of beautiful and unique stones found on many walks along the beach. When working from
a blank canvas, she imagines the placement of stones along the shore and during the act of
painting the stones begin to settle into place as if the tide had just washed them in. Sometime
the stones bring in other objects such as shells or fishing floats, and every painting is like a trip
to the shoreline.

Kristina also enjoys painting commissions and has sometimes been given a stone with special
meaning or a little bag of pebbles to sneak into the commissioned painting, creating a new
treasure filled with these special memories.
She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Alberta University of the Arts with a double major
in painting and drawing and has achieved Senior Signature Status with the Federation of
Canadian Artists.

In the last few years Kristina has twice driven across Canada from Victoria to the coast of Nova
Scotia and found herself enjoying the colours and patterns of the stones found in mountain
creeks and the along the lakeshores of Ontario and unique beautiful pebbles from Canada’s
Eastern coast. These stones now co-mingle with her west coast favorites and some that friends
have brought from around the world. These special stones provide endless painting inspiration!
“… Boardman currently specializes in still lifes of beach stones, to the inanimate shapes of
which she lends as much personality as to an intimate portrait of a person. In its arresting
dramatic effect, Boardman’s work is similar to trompe l’oeil painting, where tricks of perspective
render a flat surface seemingly mulitidimensional. But Boardman’s work is art, not artiface. You
want to reach out and touch one of her paintings, so rich is their depth, complexity of colour
and pattern…”