Seven-year-old Kieron Williamson got a book for Christmas on how to draw horses. Nice, particularly since Kieron has already earned at least $53,000 selling his paintings to collectors, including a Toronto businessman.

"Horses are very difficult," he tells The Star on a break from kicking a soccer ball around the house. "People always get the legs and heads wrong."

Williamson, whose last exhibit in December set a record by selling 16 watercolours in 14 minutes for $29,000, is "red-hot" in the art world now, lavished with praise for his command of colours and form, compared to Picasso and Monet.

He's been painting for 18 months, since he was 6.

"He is red hot," says Adrian Hill, owner of the Picturecraft Gallery in Holt, Norfolk, where Kieron's paintings sold out at 9:15 a.m. on the day of the opening. A Toronto businessman based in Japan bought a snow scene with a phone bid.

"I believe the last child artist in this bracket was Picasso. And Kieron is getting better and better and better: The pace at which he learns is quite amazing."

Kieron himself lumps that book on horses in with his other Christmas presents: a tabletop soccer game, a crystal-growing kit and some additions to his Bart Simpson collection of duvet, mug, books and pyjamas. Christmas was, he says, "really good."

He took a brief holiday break from painting but his next two works are already in his head and he describes them with finesse and clarity.

"One, I've already drawn out. It's a scene in Norfolk with lots of boats. There's one in the foreground with a big mast on it, a church in the distance and some geese. The second is a street scene in Rome. There's eight or nine horses in the middle, actually more to the right. There a person, a swimming pool and on the right-hand side you've got Venice-type building. On the left, you can see a couple of buildings. In the centre, or more to the left, is a type of pylon."

Has he ever been to Rome? "No, I got a picture off the Internet."

In fact, in his brief seven years, he's been mostly in Norfolk, on England's east coast, and once in Devon and Cornwall in the west where on a May, 2008, holiday his parents first handed him a pen and paper. He produced not a fridge-worthy scrawl but a credible work of art. Keith and Michelle Williamson, a former electrician and a nutritional therapist with no artistic ability between them, are still stunned.

"We're way beyond our comfort zone," Michelle says. "I don't think we'll ever get used to it."

She's had to defend the family in an online art forum from accusations the couple are exploiting their son.

"I was surprised at the negativity. This is his own level of commitment and determination.

"He's a worrier like me. He worries about people's opinions of him. This is an emotional release," says Michelle, 36. Then in the same breath: "When he's painting, nothing fazes him. if he doesn't like something, he'll paint over it and start again."

At first, she and Keith thought it was a phase. "He was passionate about trains when he was little and that passed. Then it was dinosaurs and that passed. This artwork thing he's stuck at for 18 months. He asks questions Keith and I wouldn't have a clue about, the difference between watercolour, oil and pastel technique. We put him in touch with artists who can answer his questions."

Other than that and a six-month local workshop in 2009, Kierson has taught himself shading, depth, proportion and colouring in three media. Once school resumes next Tuesday, he'll revert to his old painting hours: "I paint in the morning until half past eight and from half past three in the afternoon. Four or five hours a day."

There's still time, though, for sports and computer games and tabletop football.

None of his art hangs in the Williamsons' house.

"We've had to sell most of them because of the public interest. The radiators have oil paintings on them and there are pastels propped up on those. The house really is more like a workshop," says Michelle.

Clutter isn't the only sign of creeping international celebrity. The Saatchi Gallery in London asked the lad to do them a watercolour for the Starlight Children's Foundation charity auction in September, alongside contributions by designer Vivienne Westwood and shoe guru Jimmy Choo. His star-shaped canvas fetched $25,000 and limited edition prints themselves commanded $3,000 apiece. Even his 5-year-old sister Billie-Jo, got her own pink sparkly drawing in the Saatchi schookids' artwork auction.

A watercolour sent to the Queen elicited a letter of thanks from a lady-in-waiting with descriptions of the royal collection of Norfolk landscape painter Edward Seago, Kieron's hero.

"We never saw this coming." says Michelle. "It's our job to see he's happy and balanced."

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Surely there was some hint of all this before that fateful Cornwall holiday?

"He was a very active toddler," says Michelle, and his only affinity with the landscape was as an opportunity to wade through mud puddles. Then she pauses, and remembers.

"At a very early age, he told us he would be world famous at something — Formula 1 racing, profootball, something. Kieron amazes us on a daily basis with his self-motivation. He gets up at six o'clock and we hear the chinking of the jam jar and we know he's painting."