8-year-old painting prodigy is new art world star
August 15, 2010 01:16 pm
HOLT, England – Kieron Williamson is Britain’s most talked-about young artist. His paintings fetch hefty sums and there’s a long waiting list for his eagerly anticipated new works.
It has all happened so quickly — he’s still getting used to the spotlight — and Kieron Williamson fidgets a little when he’s asked to share his thoughts on art.
“Cows are the easiest thing to paint,” said Kieron, who has just turned 8. “You don’t have to worry about doing so much detail.”
Horses, he says, are “a lot harder. You have to get their legs right, and you have to make their back legs much bigger than their front.”
Paintbrush prodigy Kieron — dubbed “mini Monet” by the British press — is a global sensation. All 33 of the pastels, watercolors and oil paintings in his latest exhibition sold, within half an hour, for a total of 150,000 pounds ($235,000).
Buyers from as far away as the United States lined up overnight outside the gallery, and there is a 3,000-strong waiting list for his impressionistic landscapes of boat-dotted estuaries, snowy fields and wide marshland skies.
He has a website and a business card. Strangers approach him at the gallery, asking him to sign postcards of his work. Journalists from around the world travel to his small home town in eastern England to interview him.
Kieron shrugs off the attention. “It feels normal to me,” he says.
Associated Press
It has all happened so quickly — he’s still getting used to the spotlight — and Kieron Williamson fidgets a little when he’s asked to share his thoughts on art.
“Cows are the easiest thing to paint,” said Kieron, who has just turned 8. “You don’t have to worry about doing so much detail.”
Horses, he says, are “a lot harder. You have to get their legs right, and you have to make their back legs much bigger than their front.”
Paintbrush prodigy Kieron — dubbed “mini Monet” by the British press — is a global sensation. All 33 of the pastels, watercolors and oil paintings in his latest exhibition sold, within half an hour, for a total of 150,000 pounds ($235,000).
Buyers from as far away as the United States lined up overnight outside the gallery, and there is a 3,000-strong waiting list for his impressionistic landscapes of boat-dotted estuaries, snowy fields and wide marshland skies.
He has a website and a business card. Strangers approach him at the gallery, asking him to sign postcards of his work. Journalists from around the world travel to his small home town in eastern England to interview him.
Kieron shrugs off the attention. “It feels normal to me,” he says.
Associated Press
