When Alexandra Nechita was 4, her mother thought she spent too much time on coloring books. So her mother stopped buying them. Soon Alexandra was drawing her own designs and coloring them. By age 10, she was a professional artist.

Today, Alexandra works with oil paints on canvases bigger than she is! Her parents converted a family room into a studio, where she paints for three hours a day. She is inspired by everyday things: driving past a field of sunflowers or watching her baby brother, Max. Alexandra listens to classical music and closes her eyes. Soon her imagination turns these ordinary events into the unusual shapes she loves to paint.

Her style is called abstract or cubist (kyoob-ist) art. Some say it resembles the work of the great cubist artist, Pablo Picasso. Alexandra finally saw a Picasso painting after she began painting herself. “It was like meeting another person,” she says. “He had the same intensity I do.”

Alexandra’s art has been shown in California and New York. She has sold more than a million dollars’ worth of her work. She and her paintings will tour galleries worldwide. She plans to present England’s Queen Elizabeth with a painting.

When she is not painting, Alexandra plays with her dog, Olive, or practices the art of rollerblading. “I’m a normal kid first,” she says. “And nothing will ever change that.”

Questions

1. Why do you think Alexandra’s mother thought Alexandra should stop spending so much time coloring in coloring books?

2. In your own words, explain what Alexandra means when she says that she and Picasso have the same intensity.

3. Do you think Alexandra is a successful artist? Explain why or why not.