8 yr old paintbrush prodigy

8-year-old British prodigy stuns the art world. Buyers line up overnight for latest exhibition.

by Jill Lawless ~ Associated Press

HOLT, England -- He's Britain's most talked-about young artist. His paintings fetch hefty sums and there's a long waiting list for new works.
It all has happened so quickly -- and Kieron Williamson fidgets a little when asked to share his thoughts on art.

"Cows are the easiest thing to paint," says 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 the equivalent of $235,000.

Buyers from as far away as the U.S. lined up overnight outside the gallery, and there is a 3,000-strong waiting list for his impressionistic landscapes. "It has been overwhelming," said his mother, 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 he 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. "We don't understand it," Michelle Williamson said. "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."

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