My Kid could do that !

I recently watched a documentary from 2006 titled " My kid could do that! ". It's the story of a young girl named Marla Olmstead. They had called her a child prodigy and some of her paintings were selling for tens of thousands of dollars.She was 4 yrs old at the time!

The story was interesting(even though it was obvious to me that the child was not painting the pieces herself) because of the way abstract expressionism was portrayed. As an abstract artist I've had to explain why some pieces sell for millions of dollars even though they look as though a child could have painted it. I could spend all day writing about the topic, but I'll keep it as short as possible.

It was Picasso that said,"there are no child prodigies, it's just the genius of childhood". Children see the world in it's simplest form.They don't have any pre conceived notions about the world around them. As artists many of us go through years of formal training and it becomes difficult for many of us to paint without bias. We have our favorite styles ,mediums, and artists. Going beyond the box of realism is difficult and we struggle to return to a child like way of viewing the world.I guess it's almost like the circle of art. " All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."-Pablo Picasso