![]() When The Guardian’s Patrick Barkham caught up with the established artist earlier this year, he observed how the then 11-year-old had changed, both physically and artistically. Williamson still paints when he’s not at school or playing football-his favorite sport-indicating he’s just a typical, well-rounded kid with an extraordinary talent. ![]() Today, Williamson’s works fetch up to £390,000-roughly $612,670.50-and sell out in a matter of minutes. That was 2010, when Williamson was seven, less than two years after painting his first picture on a whim. They were sold to collectors from all over the world. Prices ranged from £1,825 ($2,867) to £7,995 ($12,562) for his works of various mediums-from watercolors to pastels to oil paintings. “He has been drawing and painting ever since.” The mini- Monet, as many have come to know him, had his first solo exhibition shortly after.Īdrian Hill, owner of the Picturecraft Gallery in Holt where Williamson lived at the time, organized the show. “But I think it was the harbors and the boats and the scenery which first captured his imagination,” she added. “Before then, Kieron wouldn’t spend much time drawing for himself,” his mother, Michelle, told the UK’s ITV News in 2009. In 2008, his family was on holiday and a scenic coastal town in Southeastern England that they were visiting captivated the young artist. So, in an attempt to really just make ourselves (and you) feel bad about how little we accomplished by the age of ten, The Daily Beast has rounded up some of this generation’s child art prodigies to find out if they’ve kept up with their fifteen minutes of fame or simply grew out of it.Īs with most young prodigies, Williamson had very little experience with painting before picking up a brush at age five. Still, there have been some pretty amazing kids prove the skeptics wrong. Over the years, many of those deemed child prodigies have had their integrity questioned-mostly as to whether or not a parent was behind the final product. “There is a biological difference that kicks in with these kids and they become obsessed with their work and want to engage in their art or play the piano all the time,” she stated, “even though they are ordinary kids in the sandbox.” Joanne Ruthsatz, one of the nation’s top researchers on child prodigies-and who believes Andre is in this exclusive group-says a child prodigy can still be an art wunderkind and your typical kid. “Child prodigies draw realistically, not abstractly,” Urist writes, “and they don’t have any interest in sharing their work.”īut, Dr. I got it from my heart,” she told me.Īs Jacoba Urist points out in a recent article in The Atlantic titled “ What Makes a Child an Art Prodigy?,” it takes obsession and dedication to master their craft, as described by child psychologist and prodigy expert Dr. After all, she couldn’t give me more than a few words in attempting explain it to me. Her work has definitely progressed and she seems to be using more advanced techniques than when she was a toddler, but the narrative depicted in promotional brochures and press releases seemed way too complex for Andre to have conceived herself. ![]() Whether or not she actually created the works herself, I’ll never know. “Or do her parents-who are also artists-play a large role in guiding the brush that pulled in well over $200,000 in 2012?”Īndre spoke to me by phone the following day in a seemingly rehearsed tone while her mother sat next to her to reiterate, in Russian, questions she didn’t understand. “Can a seven year old-let alone a two year old-really make the conscious calculations necessary to create ‘true’ works of art?,” I rhetorically asked readers. The little girl I saw before me, running and screaming around the gallery, simply seemed like a typical kid in a stimulating environment who was up past her bedtime. These are the questions I kept asking myself at a recent exhibition of seven-year-old art prodigy Aelita Andre, who has been painting since she was nine months old and exhibiting since she was four. So, are children revered more for their work because of their talent or for their age? Or, are they not even responsible for their works at all? It seems like almost anyone under the age of ten can immediately be labeled a prodigy, solely for being slightly ahead (and more dedicated) than their peers. A quick search for “child prodigy” will give you a flood of results: kids of different ages, who can paint like Picasso, make music like Mozart, or write prolific poetry like Sylvia Plath.
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