:
Akiane Kramarik is an American child prodigy in the fields of art and poetry. Born July 9, 1994 in Mount Morris, Illinois, she was the third of four children born to a Lithuanian mother and an American father. She also has Jewish, Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, Russian, Bohemian, Chinese, French, Danish and German heritage.
Although the family was very poor, the children created their own fun using their imagination, and they were mostly home-schooled. Her family was atheistic and rarely talked about spiritual matters, but one morning sometime when she was four, Akiane began sharing her visions of heaven. Because Akiane was home-schooled, and had never been out of their sight, the parents were certain that no one else could have influenced Akiane's sudden and detailed visions about the spiritual realm.
These dreams and visions, which to Akiane seemed to be actual life experiences, sparked an intense interest in drawing. Inspired by faces, Akiane would sit for hours drawing with black lead pencils or charcoal, erasing and shading their features. The walls of her home were filled with sketches of angels, family, her friends, and faces that she dreamed about. When she was six years old, she began using color pastels, and moved to acrylics when she was seven, being frustrated with oil pastels not being able to render details. She intuitively figured out how to mix and blend them. Now her favorite media are acrylics for full figures, and oil paints for large portraits.
Akiane's first poem was so deep and thought-provoking that the parents weren't sure how to handle another phenomenon. Akiane had always had quite a challenging time with the three languages spoken at home, Lithuanian, Russian or English, and didn't enjoy reading as much as the others, yet she now began to write or dictate poetry that needed no editing. Up until that time Akiane had only read nursery rhymes, so the source for the stunning imagery and wisdom of her poetry was a mystery. They could only wonder at her intricate connection to God's mind.
One morning, Akiane was found gazing through the window at the sky, her face glowing, her eyes sparkling. Asked what she was doing she simply answered, "I was with God again, and He told me to pray continually. He showed me where He lived. I was climbing transparent stairs; underneath I saw gushing waterfalls, and as I was approaching Him, His body was pure and intense light. What impressed me the most was His hands -- they were gigantic! I saw no bones, or veins, no skin or blood, but maps and events. Then He told me to memorize thousands upon thousands of wisdom words on a scroll that did not look like paper, but more like intense light. And in a few seconds I got somehow filled up. From now on I will get up early to paint. I hope one day I'd be able to paint what I was shown." Today she gets up at 5 a.m. five or six days a week to get ready to paint in the studio and write, and works for about three hours a day.
Her images were often surprising in other ways. In Found, which portrayed two abandoned babies discovered in a rainforest in Madagascar, Akiane painted a background of waterfalls, only to discover later that this was the exact location where the orphan siblings had actually been found.
Akiane spent a lot of time searching for the right faces for models for her pictures, but then she discovered that if she prayed, the models would come into her life right away. For over a year Akiane was looking for Jesus model and finally asked the whole family to pray with her. The very next day an acquaintance brought her friend, a carpenter who stood almost seven feet tall, to meet Akiane. Akiane immediately knew she would paint him as Jesus.
When asked why she thinks she received the gift, Akiane thinks that she has been blessed by God for one reason and one reason only, and that is to help others. Akiane is hoping to use her amazing gift to help feed needy children around the world.
Akiane was one of the children interviewed in the documentary, Indigo Evolution, by James Twyman. Her first book, Akiane, Her Visions and the Messages to Mankind, is due out in 2006.
