The paintings, life and words of the great Vincent van Gogh are a magnet for many, as well as his mysterious demise. Using the poetic language of love, 125 artists from various countries have conveyed the story of his death in their paintings.

Bulgarian artist Elizabeth Hristova–Lisa came across information about an international film production, and sent her CV to the quoted address, just in case and somewhat like a joke. Soon she was contacted and found out that she had been accepted to work for the world’s first fully oil painted feature film.

The masterminds behind the large-scale international project Loving Vincent are Polish artist Dorota Kobiela and Oscar-winning director Hugh Welchman who based on 120 paintings and 800 letters of Van Gogh decided to recreate his incredible life story and his death veiled in mystery.

They shot the film with actors after which the footage was transformed into oil paintings. Thus 12 oil paintings per second pass before the eyes of the audience. Artists painted for months to create more than 60,000 paintings matching the style of the great Dutch master and finally produced a film with great fascination for audiences. So far the film which will be screened in Bulgaria this autumn has won very positive reviews and prizes too.

To prepare for the task of painting portraits based on the style of Van Gogh Elizabeth Hristova enrolled in training at the studio in Gdansk, visited galleries to see original works by the artist and studied his life. “My life was Van Gogh from morning till night, I devoted to him a year of my life”, she recalls. For that time Lisa managed to paint 720 artworks equal to just 1 minute from the film Loving Vincent.

“The artists had to remain loyal to the work of Van Gogh on the one hand, and to the actors’ play on the other”, Elizabeth Hristova recalls. “We were not expected to follow blindly the brush strokes but rather to convey the emotion and colors through his paintings. The film’s story is about the last days in the life of Van Gogh – a period that prompted questions and speculations not only among his contemporaries but even today because of his controversial death. They say he committed suicide but at the moment he died from a gunshot wound he lived his heyday as an artist and opposite to widespread views that ne was not acknowledged, his artwork enjoyed goodwill interest. Besides, in the year of his death he had a debut in Paris where he showed ten of his paintings and even sold one of them. During the last two weeks of his life he created 98 paintings and 120 drawings– under surveillance of his doctor Paul Gachet who argued Van Gogh was in a good psychological condition. All that adds a lot of mystery to the way he died.”

The only Bulgarian in this grand experiment is the granddaughter of acclaimed Bulgarian sculptor Petar Doychinov. She paints sensual images in bright colors and adds a lot of air in her paintings. She has taken part in many exhibitions and her works are owned by collectors worldwide.

“I grew up in a family of artists and medics and I was split on what way to choose”, Elizabeth Hristova says. “I first graduated the Medical University, but then I took the other direction and have been painting for ten years already. I am experimenting all the time so I am not tied to a certain style. I live with the thought that I have not done anything big so far and the big things are ahead. I hope that I will always have this feeling, because if one day I wake up with the thought that I have reached the culmination of my work as an artist this would mean that I should throw away the paintbrushes and take up something different.”

English Daniela Konstantinova