Is this toddler the youngest art blogger in the UK?

Blog Like It Was Done By A Toddler showcases the artwork of young Libby Williams.

Talented toddler Libby Williams is breaking into the art world with her blog, Like It Was Done By A Toddler.

LIWDBAT, a creative collaboration with mum Mary Harrington Williams, began in August 2018 and documents the Cambridge youngster’s artistic endeavours with amazing commentary.

The blog’s description reads: “The artist, Elisabeth (Libby) Williams, was born in 2016 and is self-taught.

“Her interests include the interplay of Jungian archetype and contemporary politics, Goethean colour theory, digging in the sandpit, and the dialogue between each artist’s situation of herself within a tradition and the contemporary pressure for creative ‘originality’.”

(Elisabeth Williams) Landscapes 4: Container Port, Hudson Bay, NY – 2018, mixed media. “Container Port brings the artist’s love of the natural work into sharp focus through a blend of her characteristic watercolour ‘impasto’ with dynamic crayon lines, which leap from the page around the white shapes on the ‘horizon’. The effect is of industrialisation thrown into relief by the lively forces of sky, sea and wind. In our age of globalised late capitalism and widespread industrial pollution it remains a touchingly optimistic vision” – Mary Williams

Mary, who runs and provides commentary for the blog, explained that the project began as a joke, but that she loves the creations her daughter cooks up.

She said: “It started out as a joke on WhatsApp with a friend who also has a toddler daughter (she appears on the blog as visiting artist ‘Pipsinella’). My friend actually is in the art world and we started sending each other toddler art with gallery-style commentary.

“It got so I was seeing everything Libby did in those terms so I started blogging it just to get it out of my system, and to make my friend laugh.

“I’ve always loved drawing and painting and it’s been such a buzz seeing Libby start to enjoy it too.”

(Elisabeth Williams) Nee Naw 3: Out To Pasture – 2018, mixed media. “This poignant closing tryptich in the ‘Nee Naw’ series explores different directions that have been taken by the gradual decline of our public service ethos from its 20th-century apogee” – Mary Williams

Mary adds art gallery-style captions to complement each of Libby’s pieces, delving deep into the meaning of the work.

She said: “I couldn’t tell you whether I feel like I’m poking fun at contemporary art or participating in it. Why shouldn’t we see her work as real art?

“A lot of contemporary art is just a collection of objects until you stick a commentary on it and put it in a gallery; given that, which one of us is the artist – the one painting or the one providing the commentary?

“Are her paintings ‘found objects’ for my artistic practice? Or am I just having a laugh providing spoof commentary for a toddler’s paintings? I couldn’t say.”

(Elisabeth Williams) Landscapes 6: The House In The Woods – 2018, watercolour. “This evocative work revisits a more traditional use of watercolour paint but retains the artist’s characteristic bold brushwork, offering up a landscape of shadowed forms and far-flung perspective that hints at faraway topographies of mystery and longing” – Mary Williams

As well as hosting Libby’s creative work, the blog also showcases several “visiting artists” from around the world.

LIWDBAT accepts artistic submissions, and is open to work from children everywhere with a passion for arts and crafts.

Mary said: “Like all parents of course I think my child is an artistic genius, but even independent of the fact it’s my daughter’s work I find some of her creations (especially the paintings) genuinely lovely.

“I’d love nothing more than to give a platform to some more of the up-and-coming artists out there.”