Boy (age 7) Paints Like Old Master

[woo me with science]

I know there have been some hoaxes with child artists, but I really hope this one is real...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/29/boy-paints-like-old-master

The boy who paints like an old master

His pictures cost upwards of £900, there are 680 people on a waiting list to buy them, and his second exhibition sold out in 14 minutes. Patrick Barkham meets the gifted artist Kieron Williamson, aged seven...

...

Artist Kieron Williamson, age seven, painting at home in Holt, Norfolk. Photograph: Graham Turner From Jan Lievens to Millais, there have been plenty of precocious geniuses in the art world. Excitable press coverage has compared Kieron to Picasso, who painted his first canvas, The Picador, aged eight.

"We don't know who Picasso is really," says Keith.

"I know who Picasso is," interrupts Kieron. "I don't want to become Picasso."

Who would he like to become? "Monet or Edward Seago," he says.

....

Garner, a professional artist, has taught more than 1,000 adults over the last few decades and Kieron, he says, is head and shoulders above everyone. "He doesn't say very much, he doesn't ask very much, he just looks. He's a very visual learner. If I did a picture with most students, they will copy it but Kieron is different. He will copy it and then he will Kieronise it," he says. "It might be a bit naive at the moment but there's a lovely freshness about what he does. The confidence that this little chap has got – he just doesn't see any danger."

[StrongBad]

1. Very impressive for a 7 year old.

Hopefully as he grows he'll move away from the banal nature scenes into more emotionally mature territory.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

2. He is just 7!

I'd think he has plenty of time for emotional mature territory..........

[nickinSTL]

16. and what, exactly, is wrong with nature scenes?

n/t

[BlueJazz]

3. I painted when I was quite young. Here's some of my early work.

[struggle4progress]

4. They'd probably like those pictures of Uzis in the gun forum

[burrfoot]

8. If you're offering to

commission this kid to paint one, Shares, I would LOVE a picture of an Uzi drawn by him!

A Desert Eagle model, I think.

Thank you!

[struggle4progress]

9. Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature

about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal ... In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing ... I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained ... The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter ... Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them ... "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (pdf)

[marzipanni]

10. Oh...

While first reading that, I felt compelled to give that excerpt a :thumbsup: but at the end a :thumbsdown:.
How sad when a child's imagination is quashed by the dull close-mindedness of adults!

[struggle4progress]

11. Saint-Exupery was a French aviation pioneer. The book I linked was his effort at a children's book.

He wrote several others, including one translated into English as "Wind, Sand, and Stars" -- a beautiful humanistic work on the early days of flight; I highly recommend it. He also wrote a book during WWII about his fighting experience, before he died in the war

[marzipanni]

12. I have "Le Petite Prince" on my bookshelf in my old room at my mom's house

and your excerpt was familiar, though I had forgotten it over the 4O+ years since I bought the book and read it when taking French in high school!
Thanks for the recs of Saint-Exupery's other books. I'm sure I would enjoy "Wind, Sand, and Stars", and my husband would probably like that, and the second one.

In the mid-seventies I worked as a nurse on Nantucket Island and on a few occasions flew to or from Boston on a small commuter plane.
Flying back to the island on a clear, moonless, spring night, there was nothing above us but the deep midnight blue and stars of the night sky, and nothing below but the deep blue-black of the Atlantic with little star-like points of fishing boat's running lights. I felt as though we were traveling in outer space- kind of a magical experience!

[TZ]

13. Its a HAT!

I read the first sentence and knew that was from The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince). I've read it both in English and French. Wonderful wonderful book.....

[struggle4progress]

14. We agree about something!

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[donheld]

5. Why did you paint Barbara Bush?

[704wipes]

6. paintings remind me somewhat of Winslow Homers'

I like them.

[woo me with science]

7. I love his use of color.

So bright and so clean.

[spinbaby]

15. Did anyone notice the link to the Michael Jackson paintings on that page?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2009/dec/10/michael-jackson-painted?picture=356726995

[Odin2005]

17. That kid is awesome!

:D

[Capn Sunshine]

18. and by 21, his work will look like THIS:

[phasma ex machina]

19. LOL

:rofl:

[TrogL]

21. Why in hell does a cottage that small need three fireplaces?

There's barely enough room in there to swing a cat and it's got three fireplaces, one a double.

Oh, and it's probably going to get flooded assuming its basement isn't already under water.

[ashling]

23. One is for a wood stove I guess

[applegrove]

20. Those are lovely watercolors.

[tigereye]

22. lovely, thanks for posting

amazing ability for one so young.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

24. He might be the next John Constable.

Good stuff.