20/20 or some such show had a story on her, too. Much of the story was about how it’s quite amazing how she never seems to paint any of those paintings when anyone but her parents are watching.
Faaaaake!
Actually ‘her’ work could get her a lot of money, a guy down the road does paintings exactly like this and we’re often surprised how much he sells them for.
That’s how I feel exactly. Most of those pictures are either kinda ugly or very ugly - about what you’d find at a Motel6 art sale. If they were painted by a known adult, they’d be called “cheesy.”
I am somewhat doubtful that a 4-year-old converted anyone, but whatever.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
Her art is certainly skilled. As for emotion… Well, one or two seemed to have some feeling behind them, but mostly, they’re kind of bland (My tastes apparently mirror Oprah’s; I thought The Planted Eyes was pretty good). Maybe those one or two will blossom into more, as she lives her life. Or maybe they won’t, and she’s just a very technically talented kid.
But to say that her poetry qualifies as genius… I’m not buying it. It may well be that writing the poetry does something for her, maybe helps her to paint, but it doesn’t do anything at all for me. It’s better than a lot of the angsty teenage lit-mag stuff, but that’s not saying much. It’s still pretty weak both technically and emotionally.
God help me, I love Marla Olmsted’s work, but I’m seething with jealousy that due to her family connections (did you see on the site that’s she’s a descendant of Frederick Law Olmsted?) she gets her stuff in galleries and other little kids I know who paint just as well get refrigerator space. Oh well - I guess at that age it’s just as good!
Here’s my favorite unlikely artist: Amanda. She does not have her own site, though.
I’m with the general feeling on Akiane – her stuff is technically accomplished for someone her age, but doesn’t grab me. And the religious stuff is just creepy.
Marla I believe. You can see that her talent is burgeoning but genuine.
The OP I find to be very unlikely and suspicious.
Please, please, don’t bring up Marla Olmstead. Just don’t.
Really.
So we don’t have to read through a 15-page thread, could you tell us which page the Marla Olmstead discussion is on? Because neither of those names shows up on the page you linked.
I’m wondering just how much of her painting is copied from photographs. I would guess nearly all of it, but I don’t know for sure. On another messageboard I saw a discussion of her work that included a portrait that she had done of a Caucasian girl with big blue eyes. I didn’t realize until somebody posted the original famous photo of the “Afghan girl” from National Geographic that she had copied the entire thing in a more up-close “cropped” form. She had changed the skin tones to beige and pink, and the eyes to an unrealistic blue, but the shading along the nose and around the eyes was a near-perfect match to the photo. (That painting isn’t on her website gallery, BTW.)
Looking at her gallery, I have to say some of the paintings seem familar, but I can’t place them exactly. The big cat faces look very much like Barbara von Hoffman photos. She does a lot of animal photography, and her big cat faces are especially popular for postcards and such.
So, copying from and basing her paintings on photographs, as well as spending three hours a day painting and spending about 100 hours on each painting (those last two according to her website) makes the whole thing not very impressive to me at all. If she’s been at it for 3 hours a day for the past 5 or 6 years, taking a month for each painting, plus taking an already finished photo or group of photos for her subject source… ummm, yeah, I’m really not impressed.
I will say, though, that her earliest sketches, if done from real life, showed a prodigious talent. Hell, even as copies they’d still be really good for a 4 year old. Too bad everything she does now has to be “inspirational”. That really narrows the field, artistically speaking.
She’s the subject of the thread.
(sorry, I didn’t realize the link I’d posted went to page 14)
shit, this isn’t my day.
Marla’s the subject of that 15 pg thread.
Her earlier works are quite compelling; her recent work is really unpleasing to me.
It says she works from reference materials (in addition to models); the heavy shadows, and stiffness; the painstaking technique coupled with a lack of understanding of underlying anatomy in some places, are indicative of working from photos. And her Prince of Peace they show her working from a sketch she did, not the guy sitting there.
I wonder why she switched back to acrylics if she’s spending 100 hours on a painting. For acrylics you need to work fast–the paint dries within an hour and once it dries you can’t blend the colors together anymore. You have to repaint the whole area if you want to do any color blending. Maybe that’s why it takes 100 hours. 
The black backgrounds and heavy shadow give the works an unfortunate “airbrushed black velvet painting” look.
From her Q&A:
Oh lord. 
Well, I guess if was 11 and had been in that enviroment all my life, I might sound syrupy too.
Oh, and this:
ahem Couldn’t afford a big mirror? Come on! This is when she was 8, she had press stories about her already. And they can’t afford a goodsized mirror? Those great big canvases she uses cost probably twice as much, and so would the paint for something that size. I suspect some attempts to tug at my frayed and brittle heartstrings!
And she says the paintings can sell for $700k! Jeebus. Even if she did become a Van Gogh that’s pricey.
Overall, she’s got talent, but it’s all “that’s good for her age” not “that’s good”. The unfortunate thing abut child prodigies is everyone else catches up rapidly, and no one cares if the guy who’s better than you is 38 when you’re 30, even if everyone was ooh’ing over you when you were 14 and he was 22. I’d advise her to work from life exclusively and do some quicker pieces, and an art class wouldn’t be out of line. We have thousands of years of artistic history, there’s no great merit in avoiding it to be “self-taught”.
Here’s the one you were thinking of, Ave: http://www.gicleeart.com/answer.html
Thanks, Gaudere. The one I saw was a close up of the face area, and I assumed it was the entire painting, but yes, that’s it.
I might be just be a little sore at someone messing with an icon, but I really think it’s tacky to turn an ethnic refugee into a white person. And with blue eyes! Her big green eyes were so unforgettable in the original photo. In the copy they just look kind of buggish. Man, that grates.
Even with the poem about it next to the copy she made, I don’t think she gets it. It’s just more fodder for the glurge. I mean, seriously, “Dedicated to the homeless”? Being homeless sucks, but it’s not quite the same thing as running from tanks while bombs are falling. Oy.
And 700k for this kind of crap?
I think I need to go lay down for a while…
The Afghan Girl picture is kind of nice, but it really has that “8th-grade social studies end-of-year project” feeling to it.
Wow, you people are tough. Of COURSE her paintings don’t show great depth and feeling - SHE’S 11!
What she’s doing is very impressive for her age. Extremely impressive. Whether she will continue to grow into a real artist or burn out and make portraits in malls, who knows? But jeez, give her some credit for what she’s done. There’s not one kid in 10,000 who could paint like she could at age 8. Granted, as she gets older the field will catch up with her unless she continues to progress at a rapid rate, but so what? Judge her then.
It’s not the question of her talent; she certainly has that. But whether she will be a artistic genius to rival DaVinci, as is claimed, is still up for grabs. I mean, I could walk at 9 months but I didn’t walk any better than anyone else at 2 years so early starts don’t necesarily translate into lasting skill.
Real genius, for an artist, is mostly soul and innovation and vision, not technique; technique can be learned if you just work at it enough and have a touch of talent. I worry a bit that all the focus on what she’s done so far, at such a young age, will cramp her talent and love of art. She’s got to be the main breadwinner for the family now, at age 11…could she really decide to paint for five years only things that don’t sell, or take a year off to ride horses or play video games? Art should be fun at 11 years old, not your job.
And the working from photos at her age is troubling; they’re a crutch–a crutch I have used in a pinch once or twice but not to be relied on and not good for long term learning. They make perspective and shadows and layout as easy as copying, while trying to do a foreshorted limb or composition from life is a bear, but one you have to deal with if you want to truly learn to see and translate what you see to canvas. In art school, even some very poor draftsman could produce remarkable copies from reference photos, but were gawdawful at working from life. Crutches used too much are hard to let go of, and lead to atrophy.