Wouldn’t it be great to be a born genius…
My brother Criswell sent me a link to this YouTube video:
To see this charming kid display his natural and amazing ability painting in watercolors is inspiring but depressing. I spent five years working in watercolors and I found it a very difficult. This boy just makes nice and mature paintings from the git-go. I don’t think his paintings are museum- or even gallery-worthy (yet) but I envy his ability. I don’t mean this as an “Oh poor me” moment.
The debate about so-called prodigies has to be the classic nature versus nurture discussion. In the case of Kieran, the artist here, it doesn’t appear that his parents pushed him towards doing paintings. They seem to have nurtured his natural desire to paint, after he showed the interest himself. He saw scenes that he liked and wanted record them in watercolor. He had the skills to bring his inspiration to life.
Kieran’s not only precociously talented, but he’s clearly thinking like an artist, making choices in composition and emphasizing important elements, letting the less important recede. Kieran will have a successful artistic life, assuming he doesn’t get distracted by something else. For the rest of us, it’s never this easy. We maybe some of us are born with some ability, but it takes a lifetime of struggle and learning to get anywhere as an artist. And then you might never sell a painting or be in a show, let alone have a YouTube video.
In a related matter, I’ve played the guitar for a long, long time and I couldn’t play as well as this boy, as much as I might want to:
Sungha Jung is terrific and 2.75 million+ people have been curious enough to check out the video. He plays like a prodigy but not like a robot – he has a feel for the music. I’m sure he practices several hours a day. Did his rock and roll parents (maybe they prefer opera) suggest that he take up the guitar so that Sungha could be the rich and famous players that they weren’t? Or did he see a performer on TV and beg to learn the guitar starting at age 3, and that was that? Clearly he’s worked hard to be this good. Did his parents force him to, or does he love playing so much all he wants to do is get better?
Pop music is different from landscape painting. There’s no show called America’s Got Landscape Painting Talent. Singing and playing will always be creative routes that have a better chance of ending in riches than doing paintings. Talented guitar players can do their thing, playing in clubs or on stage and people will pay to see them (theoretically). Few people would pay to see an artist paint a landscape, I’m guessing.
All I know is it must be nice to be a born genius.
Tags: landscape painting
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 9:52 am and is filed under Talented people. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.