Three years ago, Taisia Sidorova was involved in a car crash that left her in a coma with half her skull smashed and fragments of bone in her brain.

Doctors held little hope for her recovery after having to remove the left hemisphere of her brain – the side in charge of language functions and logical though – and replace it with a protective plate.

Her mother, Irina, was warned that Taisia would most likely be disabled for the rest of her life.

“She was like a vegetable at the beginning,” Taisia’s mother said. “Doctors did not believe she would survive.

“I did not want to accept it though, and I stayed by her bedside and prayed and massaged her and talked to her.”

To everyone’s surprise, Taisia not only recovered and was able to speak again, but she also developed a new talent during her therapy sessions.

“I would never have rated her artistic ability before but she's like a new person now,” her art teacher, Ludmilla Ostrowski, said. “She has a natural talent for art. It is incredible.”

Taisia, who has only limited vision and movement in her right arm since the accident, learned how to paint with her left hand and is now “top of her class for her creations.”

“The human brain is a remarkable thing,” a doctor who treated the 21-year-old said. “In her case the part that remains seems to have developed to compensate for the missing part – and, at the same time, given her a previously undiscovered talent for art.”