Contacted in mid-August to see if he would be available on the following Wednesday afternoon to do the interview for this article, Kyle Ma replied, “That won’t work; I’ll be in school.” If all you knew about Ma was that he creates beautifully rendered paintings of everything from landscapes and seascapes to flowers and chickens, you would quite naturally assume that the reason he would be in school on a Wednesday was that he would be teaching art classes. And you would be oh, so wrong.

Ma is taking classes, not teaching them. You see, this remarkable painter is a junior in high school. Yes, you read that right. Just 16 years old, his talent clearly belies his age.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Ma is an only child, who eagerly picked up a pencil when he was a young child and began to draw. “I enjoyed drawing things that related to nature, like trees and rocks,” he says, adding that his interest in rocks was fueled while he was in elementary school.

Kyle Ma

Family
Oil
14″x18″
“It was an evening in Yellowstone National Park, and I was on my way to the Lower Falls to try to get pictures of the setting sun casting on the waterfall, when I came across these bison. Although I was in a rush, I knew the subject was very special. It was a great composition, and I also enjoyed trying to convey how each bison interacted with the environment and with each other.”

Kyle Ma

Countryside
Oil
16″x20″
“This piece is a scene I saw in New Jersey, when we were driving by. The strong design struck me the moment I saw it, and I felt it had to be painted.”