Abstract watercolours, human hearts or surreal portraits are some of the spectacular embroideries created by Lisa Smirnova ’s magic hand. She’s a Russian designer that once decided to paint her paintings with needle and thread. This idea resulted in a fascinating and innovative technique that amazes everyone due to its artistic beauty and its laborious perfection on her works.
The thread, wool or cotton are the raw materials this Moscow artist uses to create the embroideries with such a lush accuracy and unmistakable style. Horse wants to bring you in touch with her new collection, named “Artist at Home”, and show you some of her most representative creations over the course of her career.
Artist at Home Collection, Lisa Smirnova
Artist at Home, Lisa SmirnovaArtist at Home Collection, Lisa Smirnova
Her last work, “Artist at Home”, is the outcome of a collaboration with the eco-friendly designer who is responsible of GO, Olga Glagoleva. It’s inspired by “painters’ dirty clothes”, as they confess. Stained trousers, shirts, shoes or scarfs. These clothes narrate the creative process behind each work. “Artist at Home” refers to the symbiosis between the artists’ home-studio and their attire.
Artist at Home Collection, Lisa Smirnova
Artist at Home Collection, Lisa Smirnova
In this occasion, both designers have transformed the canvas into cashmere, cotton and organic-hemp fabrics brought from India. Lisa Smirnova has embodied these materials with the paint, creating majestic embroideries which have 100 hours of work behind their backs, each one of them!
Studio where the laborious embroideries are made for “Artist at Home”
But if there is one thing that makes the artist so special is her capacity to transfer the observer beyond the scope of reality. Using her skills with the materials as tools of expression, most of her work is inspired by the magic tales that represent childish monsters, as those in her collection “Where the Wild Things Are”, based on a Maurice Sendak’s childish story. Also her rabbit embroideries are a subtle reminder of “Alice in Wonderland”.
Amazing embroidery of “Where the Wild Things Are” collection, Lisa SmirnovaEmbroidery from the “White Rabbit” collection, Lisa Smirnova
Another reason that makes her one-of-a-kind is her long list of embroidered portraits, both anonymous people and celebrities, as we could see in her fall/winter 2014 collection, in which the artist uniquely portraits personalities like Frida Kahlo or Charles Bukowsky.
Her ability to “paint” with the needle the excellent illustrations is amazing“The girl in white”, anonymous portrait, Lisa SmirnovaFrida Kahlo and Charles Bukowsky, fall/winter 2014 collection. Lisa Smirnova
Without a doubt, surrealism is another of her strong points. She’s more than 18k followers in Instagram! Her Capsule Collection, created in collaboration with the designer Nastya Klimova, presents embroidered clothes with anatomical figures, like human hearts or skeletons that recall the Mexican world. It seems clear that Lisa Smirnova feels special attraction to it, maybe because of its bright colours or de surrealism that surrounds it.
Capsule Collection, Lisa SmirnovaDetails of the embroideries from the Capsule Collection, Lisa Smirnova
We cannot finish without showing her wonderful embroideries with flower details – once again including a heart – conceived for a pillow.
Pillow with embroidery, Lisa Smirnova
Horse Team is fascinated by the laborious and surprising style of Lisa Smirnova, and thinks that her embroideries reach the edge of the contemporary art. They become remarkable, unique pieces that from an art collector’s point of view are equally desirable to a painting or a sculpture.