The Starry Night ( Dutch: De sterrennacht) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Right now it’s one day at a time.Museum of Modern Art, currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York “If I ever see harm coming to her either from herself or the outside world,” Katherine said, “I would pull her back. Some of the criticism questions her parents’ intentions some of it devalues the quality or integrity of her art. But people know the money is going into my education, maybe even art school.”ĭoug, 46, and Katherine, 50, have been tempered against the criticism they sometimes read on the Internet, some of it posted as comments on stories about Autumn. “If someone is going to pay a huge amount of money to buy my painting and if they know I’m going to spend it to buy a bunch of Barbie dolls, they know you’re going to waste your money on something not important. “I love my paintings, but I’m not the bragger of my paintings,” she said. She knows grown-ups are paying large amounts of money for her paintings, which the family is saving for college. I get them both together and I try to explain people’s problems with each other, and I try to ask them, ‘Can you try to work on them and make that part better?’ ”īut Autumn is also aware of what sets her apart. Let’s say a girl and girl start off friends and three weeks later they break up for some reason. “I talk about regular girl stuff, what’s happening at school, who is whose friend. “I’m not an artsy-fartsy girl when I’m at school,” Autumn said. The other inspiration was artist Andy Warhol. They were part of the inspiration for her painting “Barbie Marilyn,” which sold for about $15,000 at auction. Like most girls her age, she loves animals - especially her poodle, Ginger (“Her fur is just like ginger,” she says) - and her Barbie dolls. She drew “a jet, a cat, a train, a Haiti person looking at me … I drew swans and I also drew a little boat.” She is outgoing, talkative and patient, drawing in a sketchbook while her parents gave a long interview. It’s a question that transcends Autumn.”Īway from paint and canvas, Autumn seems a very typical child. That is a question we discuss on a daily basis.

If you put 5-year-olds in front of an 80-piece orchestra and put a baton in their hands and exposed them to that to their heart’s content, by the time they were 10, you might have a prodigy. “We’re not claiming what Autumn has done is due to some mind-blowing talent,” Doug said.

There are, however, several accomplished and collected painters in Doug’s family: Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932), George de Forest (1855-1941) and Roy de Forest (1930-2007), who was part of California’s “funk art” movement. Neither of her parents is a visual artist Doug is a musician, Katherine an actress.

Her paintings bring to mind the work of masters like Picasso, Warhol, Dali and Matisse. Prolific and versatile, she has produced a range of work representing multiple styles: abstract impressionism, surrealism and pop art. In about one year’s time, Autumn de Forest, who turns 9 this month, has become one of the art world’s youngest and biggest stars. “I do it every day,” Autumn said about painting. (Autumn is slightly taller than 4-foot-2 and weighs slightly less than 50 pounds.) Doug built her a sort of wooden bridge so she can sit on it and paint the middle of the canvas. In fact, Autumn’s canvases are now so large - typically 4 by 6 feet - that she has to paint them on the floor.

Autumn’s parents bought her museum-quality paints and canvases “to see what would happen,” Doug said, “and in very short order a prolific kind of blossoming happened, and the canvases started getting bigger and bigger.” “Elephant,” it turned out, was not a fluke.

Autumn sky art