“I don’t consider myself different. I just want to tell people I’m still a normal kid, I just have a different dream, a different goal,”
Akiane Kamarik, artist and poet, said. “Everyone is different in their own way. I’m different in art. Some people are different in music. Everybody can be different. I just am in my art.”
While she may not consider herself different, most people who hear about her do. At 12 years old, she has already been featured on countless television shows, radio shows and magazines. She has had her paintings sell for over $100,000. Even with the fame and money, she comes across as any other 12-year-old.
At the beginning of her life, Akiane was still clueless about the gift she possessed, and she had a family that did not believe in God or want anything to do with Him. “It all started when I was four- years-old,” says Akiane, “Then one day I had dream, a vision of God, and I started talking with Him. He started telling me the future and future events.”
She does not really know exactly what led her to start painting.
“When God gave me that vision that night, at midnight, I woke up and there was a pencil and paper at my desk, and I just picked it up and started drawing. I think it just came out when I saw that paper and pencil. It just came right out of me.”
Since she was only four when all this happened and living in a family where God was not named, Akiane’s parents did not believe her at first when she told them of her experience. “Then I started telling them about their future, and when it did happen they got really surprised. Slowly, little by little, they started believing me, and they encouraged me.”
The inspiration for her paintings comes from the people she meets, things she sees, nature and God. “I think I do it for Him, for God, because He gave me this gift, and the only thing I can give back to Him is the work, the paintings. I think all my paintings are to Him.”
She is not limited to expressing her gift through painting. Akiane also writes poetry. Unlike her artwork, the poetry did not begin until she was seven-years-old. She was only supposed to write a poem for a home-school assignment. “Somehow I started liking this poetry thing, and I started writing page by page. It happened from there.”
Her methods for writing poetry may be different from other poets’
methods. “It usually comes to me effortlessly. We talk and talk and talk, then a couple minutes later stop talking and look at what I’ve done, and I didn’t realize I said those words,” says Akiane. She has even had to look words up in a dictionary before because she understood what she had said.
While some young people may question God about why they don’t have an area where they excel. Akiane has done the opposite. “I don’t know. I don’t know why. Even to this day I still ask God why he picked me,” she says. “Why didn’t he pick other children who were already gifted? He just wanted to. I will probably never know that.
Some questions we want to ask Him, but we will never know.”
While she sometimes gets tired after traveling and still working on her art, she rarely gets frustrated. Akiane makes a point of saying that she likes to have fun with her gift and is just a normal kid.
For those who feel like they haven’t been given a special gift, Akiane offers advice, “Pick something that you like and stick with it. Do not quit.” She says that if people quit, they will have an empty part in their lives when they look back in 10 or 15 years. “You need to stick with it. Even when you have some struggles or confusion, just take a rest and go back to it later. Just keep on gong til you do it. My advice is not to quit.”
To see more of Akiane’s inspirational paintings visit, www.artakiane.com |
