Painting Prodigy: Little Picasso or Pretender?

Oct. 5, 2007 — -- Marla Olmstead was only 4 years old when she took the art world by storm. Exalted as a painting prodigy, she was compared by some to Picasso.

Documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev set out to tell the young painter's story and explore what constitutes abstract art. He spent countless hours with Marla and her parents, Laura and Mark, at their home in Binghamton, N.Y.

"We don't actively promote her art at all," Marla's mother, Laura Olmstead, told Kate Snow in an exclusive, live interview on "Good Morning America Weekend Edition." "The only venue to see her art work is a Web site. ... As far as us being here today, it's really just because we feel like we don't want 'My Kid Could Paint That' to be the last true and only word about our family."

The film, released Friday, did not turn out quite like anyone had expected, including Bar-Lev or the Olmsteads.

"The reality is it's a simple story," said Marla's father, Mark Olmstead. "The media takes a story and does what they will with it. Ultimately, there are regrets. ... I felt very much like the pressure that was put on us. And the pressure I put upon Marla, I regret that and I feel a lot to blame."

While he takes the blame for the pressure, Olmstead vehemently denies painting the pictures on his daughter's behalf.

Bar-Lev documented the remarkable rise of the little girl whose paintings sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

He was also there months later, recording the Olmsteads' reaction to a "60 Minutes" report questioning whether Marla had actually painted the artwork alone.

"Either somebody else painted them start to finish or somebody else doctored them up, or Marla just miraculously paints in a completely different way than we see on her home video," said one of the experts in the "60 Minutes" piece.

Some suspected that Marla's father, Mark, who is also an artist, was helping her or completing the paintings.

When Snow asked Olmstead if he ever helped his daughter paint the pictures, he responded, "I think we should define help. I do have to be involved, and I have, because she is -- was -- a one-year-old, two-year-old, three-year-old. And I help her by priming the canvas, by lifting her up over the canvas when she was younger so she could reach certain points, doing the edges, helping her with the paints themselves, as far as getting them in ketchup bottles. From that standpoint, yes, I help."