Picasso once said it took him a lifetime to learn to draw like a child. Georgie Pocheptsov, whose paintings fetch up to $9,000 each, has a head start on the master: He's only 7. "People love his talent," says Julie Band, director of the Maryland gallery that handles him. "They think they're buying an early Picasso."
Pocheptsov began his unlikely ascent in the art world five months ago, when his mother, Dubrava, seeking a recommendation for an art teacher, showed his watercolor and acrylic works to Boots Harris, owner of Discovery Galleries Ltd. in North Bethesda. Impressed, Harris started selling them—some painted when Georgie was only 4. He grossed more than $227,000—from originals and prints—of which Pocheptsov gets half. "There's a complexity there that's fascinating," says Sheryl Losser of the International Child Art Foundation, which will exhibit Pocheptsov's paintings at its Fourth of July show in Washington, D.C.
Pocheptsov developed his love of art during visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with his parents, both Ukrainian immigrants. Now, he says, "I see it in my head, and then I draw it." After his father, Oleg, died in 1995, Dubrava, 46, a software consultant, moved with Georgie to Potomac, Md., where he is currently a student at the Beverly Farms Public School. While there's an 18-month wait for his paintings, neither Dubrava nor Harris is pushing him. "If he feels like painting that's fine," says Harris. "If he feels like wrestling on the floor, that's fine. He's a first grader."
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