alot.: August 2012

When I was a little girl, everyone told me I was talented. And by everyone I mean my mom and dad. Which, when you're five, are pretty much the only people that count. I'm always astounded when I hear about people who's parents pushed them into accounting or engineering or, I don't know, what's another mind-numbingly boring but well paying job? President? Anyway, from the time I could talk (or probably before then) I was doodling, making a mess of every childhood home I ever had by covering it (and myself) in colour. It didn't matter the medium, I just loved to draw. Felt pens, ink, watercolour, pastels, pencils - whatever. And it never occurred to me that I would do anything else for a living, my parents always encouraged me to work on my art.

But wait, you need more context: my dad is a classical musician, his uncle is an artist. My mom's kind of an artist too, but I must admit that for her it's more of a hobby. Never the less, these highly creative people took one look at the splatterings of a two year old who was trying to render a frog she saw earlier that day and thought: "Brilliant! Amazing! She's so talented!"

I'm guessing all new parents feel this way at some stage, their kid throws a ball and they imagine a star cricket player. A baby learns to swim earlier than expected and the parents are sure they have the next Micheal Phelps on their hands. A foetus kicks in utero and the mom fantasises about going to the soccer world cup in twenty years. My frog drawing looked something like this:

A Picasso like abstraction of nature

Actually it looked a little worse than that. Imagine it minus the PhotoShop and covered in mud.

I recently watched a documentary called My Kid Could Paint That. It features a so-called prodigy painter named Marla Olmstead. She was four when she started to paint, and her paintings fetched thousands of dollars by the time she was five. This film made me have a lot of... well a lot of feelings. Conflicted emotions, let's say. I won't get too far into it now (because it's kinda boring), but basically it made me pretty angry. Marla is a very sweet little girl who clearly enjoys to paint (what five year old doesn't like to smoosh paint between their fingers), but instead of encouraging her and teaching her how to paint better, her parents chose to exploit her. That's a very strong statement. But what else can you call it? Even if they're not doing it on purpose (as they claim) it's still a violation.

My parents thought I was a freaking genius, but I never got an endless supply of paint, huge canvases bigger than me and I sure as hell didn't get my own solo show at age 5. The documentary questions whether Marla actually painted the works that bear her name or whether she got help from her artist father. Personally, I think her dad helped her. That's pretty clear to me. But that doesn't make him a bad parent. No kid is gonna pick up a brush and just know what to do. Of course someone showed her how! But why lie? Why pretend that he just idly sat back and watched the genius unfold? That makes him a bad parent.

In any case, anger aside, I tried to do some more research to compose a balanced review (how am I doing?) and I found this video. The girl's name is Aelita Andre, and she's also a child artist prodigy type person. With one minor difference: her parents acknowledge (at least to some extent) that her 'talent' is really just a product of her youth. She paints because she likes it and her parents (who are surprise, surprise also artists) simply give her the room, so to speak. I'm jealous of this girl's studio. Seriously, it's huge. I wish I had enough money to buy huge ass canvasses and then just spill buckets of paint on them. The video is very interesting. There's nothing more fascinating to me than the process of another artist, and just because this particular artist is very small, that doesn't mean it's not awesome to watch.

Here's what I think. All children are amazing. We all do things when we're kids that we never do in our adult lives. All kids read and draw and climb and get dirty and just figgin' play. My theory is that if you gave any kid a room and a canvas and twelve buckets of paint, and you gave them enough time and enough chances to get it right, you would be surprised by the result. Of course if you couple that with a particularly curious and clever child, you might be so taken aback with what they produce that you might want to see how much you can get for that smudge on canvas. And that's just it: it all comes down to how the parents react. Maybe if Marla's parent's were both accountants they would have put her first drawing on the fridge and called it a day. Patted her on the head, said "That's nice, dear," and moved on with their lives.

All I know is, Marla's documentary made me feel kinda sorry for her, made me angry at her parents and want to shake her patrons. But Aelita's video made me remember my own childhood, how magical making a picture was and it made me want to paint.

So, in conclusion, my latest 'work' was inspired by these two girls. My materials were about 10 nail polish bottles, and my canvas was the cover of my notebook. So we'll a low budget homage to the child abstract painters of the world.