He's no Marla Olmstead
Not yet anyway (but she has two years on him).
Marla Olmstead is a 4 year old whose splattery paintings have been selling for $6,000.
Anyway, here's Caleb's latest piece.
Really, all that matters is that its thousands of times better than anything I could attempt and I really enjoy looking at it.
Cf. Marla's:
Marla Olmstead is a 4 year old whose splattery paintings have been selling for $6,000.
Anyway, here's Caleb's latest piece.
Really, all that matters is that its thousands of times better than anything I could attempt and I really enjoy looking at it.
Cf. Marla's:
12 Comments:
I bid a cool fiver for this masterpiece, whada'ya'say?
It seem that Marla is a talented kid. Is she a prodigy? I don’t know. There a few kids that I’ve seen doing something close to what she is doing.
Check it out: www.dantelambart.com he is 3 years old, www.jennyiospa.com. She is 2 years old.Those 2 are doing fabulous paintings.
Talented kid? No more talented than any other child of that age. This is completely random color thrown on a page, just like every other young child that gets their hand on a vat of paint and something to do it on. It's frightening, seeing the sheer degree to which people around her are willing to exploit her to part fools with their money. I can just about guarantee you that if I were to take a bunch of random colors, splatter them on a page and make sure there was no white space (as in the example peice, smearing them all together, dribbling random black lines all over it), and then somehow get it put under Marla's name (I'm sure her agents have a tight lock on that, to make sure they get their cut of the ludicrous profits), no one would be able to tell the difference, they would chalk it up as another child 'prodigy' masterpeice. I guess since all of the major 'modern artists' that did random garbage like this in their later lives died, the art world ahd to turn to children to get their fix for thinking they're awesome because they can see the 'genious' in absolutely random smears.
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My daughter is now six and has quite a talent for drawing and painting. However, when she paints, she paints "things". She lacks the ability to express emotion through her paintings the way that Marla seems to. Also, one might note that most children neglect to cover an entire page with art work because they can't stay focused long enough. Marla continues to paint until the canvas is covered and her desired look is achieved-
60 Minutes basically just said that it is all a fake. Her parents really did the paintings and anyone who would use their child like that should be put in jail.
Carl,
Do you have a link for this? I can guarantee you that my son does his own paintings.
Did everyone see 60 Minutes? Looks like Marla doesn't really do the paintings. She is a victim of greedy, fraudulent parents. Such a sweet kid. Makes me sick.
Gawker has some links.
Let me start off by saying this: I know Mark Olmstead, Marla's father.
Mark always was, and is, a glory hound. He was an athlete in High School, but never a star. He failed to progress because he lacked the ability.
He was a mediocre student at best.
His favorite line when he was in school and shortly thereafter was "don't you know who I am? I'm Mark Olmstead, number 10, quarterback for Binghamton High!" Now it would seem his calling card is "Marla's DAD."
Nobody in this area has ever believed the hype.
Let me say as a person that knows Mark and knows him well I don't believe that his daughter is painting the final product that they are selling.
I do believe that she paints a portion of them and that Mark finishes them. If you watch the film taken by the hidden camera you can plainly see that she sloshes around with the brush, covers over things and randomly places shapes and other globs of paint on the canvas. Not nearly the polished, united presentation you see in the gallery.
I hope that she is a prodigy, but I believe that she is a normal four year old with opportunistic parents.
I know Mark, and this has living vicariously and sucking up the attention written all over it.
I trust 60 Minutes (and all their stories) about as far as I can throw Dan Rather. Whatever the truth is, it will come out by the time Marla is a little older and starts to talk. In the mean time, those buying the art don't have "damages" they are actually getting art that looks great....if they are buying art for the gimmick...then too bad for them.
Marla Rebuttal
It is interesting to read the posts on the 60 minutes interview, slamming Marla. Charlie Rose spent 6 hours in my home in California talking to me about the multiple Marla originals that I own, and plan to buy more. Mr. Rose is a nice gentleman, but he really pushed to make me prove that Marla Olmstead did the work that is hanging on my walls which initially seemed to be a good journalistic approach.
I pointed to one of my large canvases called Digit 1 (one), and all over that canvas was Marla’s hand and fingerprints moving the media around with her fingers. Now I do not work for CSI but it does not take a rocket scientist to see that a very small person did this work, and if you really wanted to push it, you can actually see her fingerprint ridge outline of several fingers on the acrylic.
The comments made on some of these sites saying “ WOW 60 Minutes proved that her parents did the painting not her”, obviously didn’t see the 60 Minutes interview. Nothing like that came out during that show, what was said by the child Psychologist was that she could not determine if Marla was a prodigy! That is no surprise to me or to the Olmsteads because Mark and Laura never said she was and in fact they never use that word or even like it. (see comments on front page of her site. www.marlaolmstead.com ).
For those of you that wish to pursue this area, check out the archives of the CBS Sunday morning news. Mr. Bill Geist along with his camera crew sat in the back yard of the Olmsteads home watching Marla paint a large canvas, and yep you got me….. her dad did help her out….. He lifted her in the air when she asked to go flying, which is her way of reaching into the middle of the canvas. How else was she going to get there, but she pointed to exactly where on the canvas she wanted to go, and her dad simply acted as a ladder for her. This was all caught on tape, but not one mention of that was on the 60 Minutes interview, however I noticed that they did take a lot of the footage from the CBS Sunday morning interview and put it in the 60 Minutes show. The scene of Laura and Marla swinging in the hammock came directly from the CBS Sunday morning news show but not of her painting, after all this might prove she actually did the work. This painting, which was completed, was shipped to Los Angeles to be auctioned off and ALL proceeds were given to the Children’s diabetes fund.
Marla was forced to paint in the basement of her home in Binghamton NY by 60 minutes, a place she does not usually use for her work, Marla likes to move around, sometimes painting outside sometimes inside on the floor, kitchen table etc. Keep in mind this is a 4, now 5 year old little girl that just likes to paint, but because she can do something that the majority of people out there can’t do, she is labeled a fraud! The Psychologist even stated in the interview, that she could NOT make the determination or state to any degree of certainty if she (Marla) did not do that painting by herself based on the 5 hours of hidden camera tapes.
Those of you who go to my web site will say, he is only saying this because he is the west coast dealer for Marla, not true. I made those statements long before I decided to open my gallery, which opened on Feb 26, three days after the 60 minutes interview. Plus I do put my money where my mouth is, I purchased 3 Marla paintings and plan on buying 2 more .
I have personally known the Olmsteads for almost one year, and one only needs to actually sit with them and see the kind of people they are to know that the fraud that they are accused of could not be further from the truth.
On one last note, there were posts about the Olmsteads moving to the Hamptons with all the money Marla has made.. I have personal knowledge in the fact that 100% of the money that comes into the Olmsteads house for the sale of her work goes directly into a trust account for Marla. In fact her parents would not even take money out of that account to pay for the materials she needed to continue her work they continued to pay for the canvas and paints out of their own pocket, and for those of you who actually paint, you know how expensive that is, especially on the size of canvasses she uses.
And no you didn't see me on the 60 minute interview, nor did you see 3 other people on that show, because we did not agree with the viewpoint that 60 minutes was trying to push. If they really wanted to have a balanced show, one or two of the opposing viewpoints should have been aired.
Sincerely
Stuart Simpson
stuART@a-stuart-gallery.com
www.a-stuart-gallery.com
818-609-1772
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