Artist Liza revealed to Bored Panda that she was born into a family of history professors and herself studied art, so her fascination with classic paintings seems natural. Because of her background, she saw that humanity has lots and lots of creativity during different time periods and in many cultural traditions.
Liza told Bored Panda that she herself was surprised that she could keep the daily posts up for such a long time. "I think the reason is that I see meaning and value in it. It's a big honor to serve art. At the same time, it's a great possibility to check [the limits of] my own possibilities and discipline. And I am proud that I can do this!"
If that weren't enough, the artist kept the project up while also working full-time and also regularly volunteering for the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, as well as at a hospital charity for the homeless.
Because Liza focuses on the details of each recreation, each photo takes around 3 to 4 hours to get right. And that's not even counting the time taken to find the painting in the first place! According to the artist, the research can take an even longer time to do, though that depends on a case-by-case basis.
Bored Panda wanted to find out which of Liza's recent recreations she's proud of the most. The artist was candid that she loves them all. "Each one of the recreations contains a piece of my soul, energy, and time. In some of the paintings, you can find people whom I love and admire, in some others—my state of mind. In other still—high ideals and patterns. So it's difficult to choose one or even a few," the artist shared.
However, Liza did add that some of the most special recreations for her include the recreations of Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey's 'Girl Reciting Quran,' American artist Julius Gari Melchers' 'The Bride of Brabant,' and Virginie Demont-Breton's 'Fisherman Woman Bathing Her Children.' Liza plans to continue her amazing recreations after taking a short rest. It's been a year, after all. "I still have a lot of ideas and pieces of art in my mind," she said, adding that she's thinking about other things besides recreations, too.
For Liza, art is a true, all-encompassing passion. Earlier, she explained that she loves admiring beauty and talent, so she wanted to bring well-known paintings into people’s lives so that they can feel the same way that she does.
What’s more, she hopes that her detailed recreations will inspire people to take a closer peek at paintings and notice all the small but important details hidden throughout. Not to mention the fact that Liza can make art seem like a lot of fun to some people who aren’t big on going to galleries and museums.
Originally, what inspired Liza to post her recreations was the LA-based Getty Museum challenge which we’ve written about before. In short, art lovers from all around the globe had a friendly competition to see who’d be best at recreating art masterpieces with the things they found lying around their homes.
#11 Virgine Demont-Breton "Fisherman's Wife Coming To Bath Her Children" (1881)
Meanwhile, the Getty challenge itself was inspired by the Dutch Instagram account Tussen Kunst en Quarantaine. So you can see what a long chain of artistic inspiration led Liza to grab the internet’s attention with her own photos.
Two other things that have astonished us a lot are the artist’s incredible discipline and dedication to her project. At first, Liza only intended to do the daily recreations for 30 days.
However, she’s been going strong ever since! Now that’s the kind of sustained passion that any creative would love to have, whether they’re a photographer, painter, or writer. In that time, Liza’s recreated a vast archive of art, from ancient paintings to some of the more exotic art found in regions like the Middle East and India.
After hearing about the Getty challenge on the internet, Liza first decided to try and push herself to go for an entire month of doing daily recreations. Back then, she wasn't sure if she'd succeed, she told Bored Panda. However, it turned out that she didn't give herself enough credit. "When the 30 days were done, I couldn't stop myself because I really wanted to show or remind other people about artists and artworks from the different epochs and cultural traditions. And I started to do it as series which reflect the ideas and personalities in art," she said.
The entire project is a one-woman show. Liza does everything by herself, including the costumes and makeup. She styles her hair herself, uses a table lamp for lighting, and takes professional-quality photos using just her phone camera.
She’s also very resourceful in how she uses props. The artist uses everything and anything she finds at home to make the photos come alive. With nearly 6k followers on Instagram at the time of writing and growing, we see great things for the artist in the future.
