A Quiet Rebellion Against the Fleeting

In an essay published in September 2025, the culturologist and art critic Pavel Butorin — co-founder of the MomArtFoundation, a foundation for the support and preservation of culture and art — examined four recent works by Art Liard. Where much contemporary art, he wrote, "resembles a lecture" that demands theory and context, Liard's pieces "require no explanation; they ask for only one thing — your attention."

He read them in turn: Raccoon and Rabbit, a classical pencil drawing of "fairy-tale spirituality" and deep calm; Beetles and the Riddle of Lost Time, an insect study subtly stylised after eighteenth-century scientific herbaria; The Guard of the Forest Mystery (Still Life with a Crow), a rich gouache whose mortar, mushrooms and raven lend it "the aura of an alchemist's inventory"; and Two Wings of Fate (Raven and Dove), an alla prima watercolour he compared to the black-and-white floor mosaics of ancient Rome — "timeless and contemporary at once."

In her hands, classical traditions are not dead languages but living, vivid forms of self-expression. These are works that do not merely ask for our attention; they quietly deserve it.

— Pavel Butorin, MomArtFoundation

For Butorin, Liard's mastery is proof "that technical skill and a deep understanding of art history are not shackles, but wings."