Boy painting wizard is a new art star
Source: Agencies |
August 14, 2010, Saturday
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HE'S 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 said, 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 (US$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 said.
It definitely doesn't feel normal to his parents, Keith and Michelle Williamson. They are bemused, proud and a little anxious about their son's talent and its effects.
"It has been overwhelming," said Michelle Williamson, a 37-year-old nutritional therapist. She and her 44-year-old art dealer husband live in a small apartment with Kieron and his 6-year-old sister, Billie-Jo.
Kieron was a normal, energetic little boy, and his parents were surprised when he asked for pencils and paper during a holiday in Cornwall two years ago. They were astonished when the boy produced an accomplished picture of boats in a harbor. He progressed rapidly to fully realized landscapes, many depicting the flat, open Norfolk countryside near their home.
"Keith and I don't paint, so we find it difficult to know what's going on inside his head," Michelle said.
"We don't understand it. We don't know where it comes from. But he's adamant it's what he wants to do. When your child has got such a gift and a talent, you have to support him."
The Williamsons showed Kieron's work to a local gallery, which has mounted two exhibitions and is helping them cope with the flood of global interest.
A self-possessed blond boy, dressed in a polo shirt, shorts and sneakers, Kieron doesn't seem like a hothouse prodigy. He likes soccer and messing around on the broad North Sea beaches near his home in Holt.
The gallery is offering two new landscapes -- Kieron's last work as a 7-year-old and his first as an 8-year-old -- by an online auction that closes next Friday.
Michelle Williamson said she and her husband won't be disappointed if Kieron one day stops painting, as long as he is happy. "We fully expect Kieron to change his mind," she said. "But we know that whatever he ends up doing, he is going to give it 200 percent."
Kieron said he knows what he wants to be when he grows up -- painter and footballer.
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 said, 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 (US$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 said.
It definitely doesn't feel normal to his parents, Keith and Michelle Williamson. They are bemused, proud and a little anxious about their son's talent and its effects.
"It has been overwhelming," said Michelle Williamson, a 37-year-old nutritional therapist. She and her 44-year-old art dealer husband live in a small apartment with Kieron and his 6-year-old sister, Billie-Jo.
Kieron was a normal, energetic little boy, and his parents were surprised when he asked for pencils and paper during a holiday in Cornwall two years ago. They were astonished when the boy produced an accomplished picture of boats in a harbor. He progressed rapidly to fully realized landscapes, many depicting the flat, open Norfolk countryside near their home.
"Keith and I don't paint, so we find it difficult to know what's going on inside his head," Michelle said.
"We don't understand it. We don't know where it comes from. But he's adamant it's what he wants to do. When your child has got such a gift and a talent, you have to support him."
The Williamsons showed Kieron's work to a local gallery, which has mounted two exhibitions and is helping them cope with the flood of global interest.
A self-possessed blond boy, dressed in a polo shirt, shorts and sneakers, Kieron doesn't seem like a hothouse prodigy. He likes soccer and messing around on the broad North Sea beaches near his home in Holt.
The gallery is offering two new landscapes -- Kieron's last work as a 7-year-old and his first as an 8-year-old -- by an online auction that closes next Friday.
Michelle Williamson said she and her husband won't be disappointed if Kieron one day stops painting, as long as he is happy. "We fully expect Kieron to change his mind," she said. "But we know that whatever he ends up doing, he is going to give it 200 percent."
Kieron said he knows what he wants to be when he grows up -- painter and footballer.
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