Alevtina Nikolayevna Golubeva (1960–2019) was born in the Urals — in the Vogulka village of the Sverdlovsk Region. She received her early training in lacquer painting on metal at the secondary technical vocational school No. 49 in 1977–1978. At the tray painting department, she studied under the guidance of the renowned craftswoman Agrippina Vasilyevna Afanasyeva.

Alevtina Golubeva received further artistic education at the Ural School of Applied Arts and later at the School of Art and Graphics of the Nizhny Tagil State Pedagogical Institute. Between 1978 and 1992, Alevtina Golubeva worked as an artist at the Emalposuda (Enamelware) factory. There, she joined the creative team of the tray painting workshop and designed traditional floral compositions. After earning her degree, she returned to the Ural School as a teacher.

The tray “Winter Rose Bouquet” was painted in 2004. This piece of decorative and applied art may seem somewhat baffling at first. On one hand, the artist used a traditional composition — a branch with three large roses and several smaller flowers. However, she chose a cold blue background. At the same time, she used the traditional technique of birch bark smoking to create a subtle play of colors on the tray’s surface, which evokes associations with winter twilight.

Alevtina Golubeva emphasized the rich imagery and technical capabilities of the Ural painting art. In this composition, she combined traditional two-color brushstrokes which she used for the leaves, and unique “inverted brushstrokes” for the flowers. In her innovative technique, the light part of the two-color brushstroke faces the center of the flower bud, and the dark part is directed toward the outer edge.

In 2006, Alevtina Golubeva was offered a job as a teacher at the Higher School of Folk Arts in St. Petersburg. In December 2009, a department of decorative painting was founded at the Higher School with a focus on the Nizhny Tagil art of painting on metal. Alevtina Golubeva was appointed the head of the new department.