The dictionary defines the term “prodigy” as follows: “A person, especially a child or young person, having extraordinary talent or ability.”
That word jumps to mind after viewing some of the paintings created by artist Elizabeth Anderstedt, an 11-year-old sixth-grader at Clearview Elementary School with a rapidly-developing set of skills and some very clear ideas as to her future.
Her art teacher, Kathy Gerdts-Senger, put it this way: “In over 40 years of teaching art, she may be the most talented child I’ve ever worked with.”
The artist, known as “Lizzy” to her friends, was engaged in multiple projects last week, drawing and painting as she thoughtfully answered questions about her life in art and her plans for the future. A child of an electronic age, she adds video games and the possibility of doing graphic designing in that area to her future life choices. “Pokemon®” is one of her favorite games at the moment, and she enjoys the genre because “anything can happen” in the video world, providing an escape from the everyday for a very curious young mind.
Among the items on display in the Clearview art room last week were a vertical landscape she had painted “in about four hours,” her work-in-progress for the Anti-Drug poster contest at the school and photos of earlier acrylic and three-dimensional paintings she had created earlier in the year. Her dragon sculpture, a favorite theme in her art works, was in baking in the kiln at the time of the interview, and so was unavailable for viewing by press time. The pre-sculpture drawing, however, showed an elaborate winged creature balancing a chalice on its tail.
Lizzy has an older sister, Terra, with whom she maintains a sibling artistic rivalry, though it has to be a long-distance contest since the sisters are currently living in different countries. Lizzy lives here with her Mom while her sister is currently attending school in Manitoba, living with her Dad who is currently working in the Winnipeg, MN area. The two share a strong artistic streak, with Lizzy saying that her older sister is especially skillful in drawing hands, a sticking point for many portrait artists, she said.
Much of Lizzy’s art work is done during the Kid Stop after school program at Clearview, a program under the auspices of the Boys and Girls Cubs in the St. Cloud School District. The program gives her ample time to draw and sketch her beloved dragons, as well as the flowers, animals and landscapes that she loves to create.
She has a wide variety of other interests, including the scientific aspects of chemistry and the possibilities of outer space exploration, including the possibility of someday discovering life on alien worlds. She is a writer as well, concentrating on fantasy stories such as her “Inferno,” in which kids find themselves in another dimension for a series of adventures with, of course, dragons, among other things. She is also working on “The Five Disasters,” which will include characters experiencing a volcano, a tsunami, a hurricane, a blizzard and an earthquake. Lizzy was also the editor of a fictional newspaper for a school project, a task which she diplomatically described as “fun.”
When not creating art in many disciplines, Lizzy also plays the clarinet, which she enjoys but classifies that as “just a hobby” in contrast with her other artistic endeavors. A self-described “cat person,” she is also fond of her tropical fish.
New projects are always on the horizon for her, including landscapes of a volcano and a glacier in a “fire and ice” theme that she hopes to enter in a contest next year, and working in a Chinese-Japanese illustrative style that has recently caught her eye.
