By William Kates

London - Newcomer Marla Olmstead is receiving high praise in some corners of the art world. Critics describe her modernist paintings as laden with emotion.

They rave about how she makes colours interact with such intensity. Her pieces have already sold for as much as $15 000.

For now, though, four-year-old Marla is more interested in making friends in her pre-school class and playing with her little brother Zane.

This shy little blonde has skipped loose-leaf art on the refrigerator to giant canvases hanging in art galleries, studios and other people's homes.

"Realistically, we didn't envision anything coming from it. Except it was fun for us, fun for Marla," says Laura Olmstead, Marla's mother.

While there are sceptics who challenge her authorship, and critics who debase abstract art, gallery owner Anthony Brunelli says there should be no argument about Marla's talent.

"She builds her paintings in layers. Children don't do that. She starts with big swatches of colours and then adds details and accents onto that. That's what is so impressive and beyond what other children do," says Brunelli, who gave Marla her first show in August. "She paints with emotion."

Marla says she is pleased that people like her paintings, that she likes to make people happy.

There have been other child artists: Alexandra Nechita, now 18, a Romanian who immigrated to the United States, began painting when she was around the same age as Marla. Dubbed the "child Picasso" by critics, her paintings have brought in more than $1,5-million . Before he was 10, Beso Kazaishvili of the Republic of Georgia, also now 18, had earned $150 000 for his paintings and had been compared to Salvador Dali.

Marla's works are filled with blazing blends of colours, texture and depth. Buzz Spector, chairperson of Cornell University's department of art, says Marla's vision and process is exceptional, but that many children provided with the right materials and influences can produce surprisingly complicated abstract art pieces. While they show a "beautiful sense of colour and material", Marla's pieces still lack the cultural and spiritual sophistication to be considered museum pieces, Spector says.

Marla's parents forbid the use of words like genius and prodigy to describe Marla. - too much pressure.

Besides her little brother, Marla says she loves flowers, pigs and the colour yellow. She is learning to spell and count. She is also cautious, strong-willed, and an unlikely star, her parents say.

Father Mark has painted since high school and Laura has an aunt and cousin in France who are artists.

About two years ago, Mark picked up his brushes again after a long hiatus and began a portrait of his wife. Marla was two.

"Any time I wanted to paint, she wanted to paint. It became more her passion than mine. It's always fun for her. Soon, I became her assistant," he says.

The Olmsteads gave one of Marla's paintings to a friend, Andy Stevens, who owns a coffee shop in downtown Binghamton, a city of 47 400.

Stevens thought it would be fun to hang some of Marla's pieces in his café.

Laura remembered Marla in nappies as she covered a 90cm by 120cm canvas with strokes of paint. Mark held her over the fabric so her little arms could reach the middle.

The finished work was called All Kinds of Colours - as Marla called most of her first pieces.

The canvas and 13 smaller paintings were hanging in Stevens' coffee shop only a short time before he called to tell Laura people wanted to buy them.

"I thought it was funny because these people didn't know a child had done it," Laura says.

In disbelief, she set the "ridiculous and exorbitant price" of $250  for the canvas piece and $35  for the smaller ones.

A few hours later, Stevens called back to say the canvas painting and three of the others were sold. Delighted and stunned, Laura called everyone in the family.

Word spread, and more paintings began to sell. In August, Brunelli gave Marla her own exhibition. Appropriately, it was titled Four. The response overwhelmed the Olmsteads, who suddenly found themselves negotiating with national television news and entertainment programmes.

To date, Marla has sold nearly three dozen paintings. The Olmsteads have put all the money into a college fund.

Marla keeps no regular or daily painting schedule, painting only when she wants to, and sometimes working on a piece over several sessions. "Painting is a three to four-hour commitment by the time we get everything out and set up, paint and then put it all away and get the area, the brushes and Marla cleaned up," her mother says. Marla paints with her fingers, spatulas, brushes, and plastic mustard and ketchup bottles.

The Olmsteads try to preserve as much of a normal life as they can. They don't allow her to be photographed or filmed at school. They rarely allow reporters into their home, and only once have they let anyone videotape Marla painting.

"Right now, painting is fun for her. That's why she does it. She likes the act of painting. She likes the messiness, the colours," Laura says.

"We don't want to spoil the fun of painting by turning it into something that's unpleasant."