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Jenny Smith was shocked to find her doppelgänger online — in a painting, that is.
The mom-of-four was blown away by the discovery of a painted portrait that bared an uncanny resemblance to her curly red locks and “large” forehead, and she became determined to get her hands on the mysterious artwork.
“Somebody posted the painting in a Facebook group in June, and a friend sent it to my sister and said, ‘This looks just like Jenny,’” Smith, 43, told Kennedy News, explaining that her sister had forwarded the link of the dead-ringer to her.
“I was instantly like, I’ve got to find this painting — I’ve got to have her. It’s not like some random portrait to me because it looks just like me,” she added.
After desperately hunting the portrait down for months, phoning various antique shops and enlisting the help of social media, the Columbia, Mississippi native was heartbroken to discover that the painting was hundreds of miles away in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
“I wanted the painting really bad, so I went to TikTok — I figured that someone, somewhere, had to be close to Spruce Pine. I even joined a Spruce Pine Facebook group,” she said.
“I tried for a good month and a half, and then I gave up because nobody was able to help me and the antique shop wouldn’t answer the phone.”
A disheartened Smith eventually threw in the towel, until a stranger online, who claimed to live near where the painting was sold, offered to help earlier this month, purchasing the painting for $10 and mailing to Smith.
“I took it out of the box and it was like unboxing myself. We’ve got the same facial expression, it’s crazy,” she said.
“It felt kind of freaky when I saw it. It was such a ‘wow’ moment — like, somebody has painted this lady who looks just like me.”
Now, her doppelgänger hangs proudly in her living room above her bookshelf, where visitors often comment on the bizarre likeness.
Smith eventually unearthed the name of the artist, Stephen Farris Jr., a late painter and WWII fighter pilot who served in the US Air Force.
The Mississippian reached out to his granddaughter, hoping for answers.
“I asked if she knew who it was that he painted, and she said that he went to art classes where random people would sit for the paintings,” Smith said.
“It’s crazy thinking that there’s someone out there who looks exactly like me.”