An Australian artist is making a splash in the New York art scene and she's only four years old.

Aelita Andre has a solo exhibition that opened at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea, but she's already sold paintings worth upwards of $30,000 a pop on the side.

The Agora gallery director, Angela Di Bello, said she judges works without first learning about the artists as a practice, but was surprised to find out the talented artist she wanted to feature was merely a toddler.

"I saw great colors, great movement, great composition and very playful, and I thought, `This is fantastic,'" said Di Bello. "Who is this person? Only to find out, she's a child."

Aelita is the youngest artist to show at the Agora Gallery. She made many of the works featured in the exhibit when she was three years old, but her parents say her passion for painting began long before then.

"I used to paint, and I had prepared a canvas on the floor," said her proud father Michael Andre. "She was nine months old and she crawled onto the canvas and she just took to it, her hands moved around the canvas."

Andre and his wife, Nikka Kalashnikova, are both artists and say they encouraged their young daughter. They bought her large canvases, acrylic paints and other materials and allowed her to create what she wanted.

"She works with the paints individually, and layers the paint and creates texture. It's amazing that she has an innate ability to do it,"Andre said.

Like any 4-year-old child, Aelita can be hyper and easily distracted, but her parents say once they put her in front of a canvas, she shows a mixture of concentration and play. It can take her a few hours to up to a day to finish her works.

But unlike other kids, Aelita's paintings are known internationally and can fetch thousands of dollars. Three of her paintings hanging at the Chelsea gallery have already been sold, for a whopping $27,000.

Her parents say she will only paint as long as she wants to and they fully understand that she might outgrow her love for the canvas. Until then, they will continue to encourage her and allow her to show her works across the world.

On their New York trip, the family visited the Museum of Modern Art.

Amid the works of Chagall and Picasso, they said Aelita was disappointed, saying "Where are my paintings?"

"The Prodigy of Color" showed at the Agora Gallery in New York until the end of June.

Are you familiar with the phrase "big things come in little packages?" Here's a perfect example of that. Imagine at just nine months old, right when her personality was starting to set in, this art babe (literally) took to the canvas and started to create.

We have to take into consideration that many "child prodigies" began their passions in life very early. Mozart starting composing music from the age of five; Billy Strayhorn wrote most of the jazz standard "Lush Life" when he was only 16 years old, while Shirley Temple was acting and tap dancing when she was five. And when Pablo Picasso painted "Le Picador," he was just eight years old! Little Aelita Andre might be no different. It will be very interesting to see what else she can accomplish if she decides to stick with art.

It was also refreshing to read that her parents, even though they are artists themselves, will let this particular talent be her choice and won't force her to continue it, if say, she realizes she would rather be an accountant instead.

Deciding what we want to do for a living is a big decision for most of us. In fact, some of us still haven't figured it out! That's one reason why I feel it's great to be so young and already know what your strengths are and being allowed to pursue them.

Detractors and critics in the New York art scene have opined that Aelita's only another passing fad, and that her fans (with more money than taste) will buy anything new and exotic.

However, if Aelita does decide to go on to other things, hopefully she will be just as prolific at them as she is at painting, and prove the critics wrong. For now I'll just sit back, say, "You go, girl," and enjoy what she has to offer!

A very colorful debut: Aelita Andre, of Australia, is the youngest artist ever to exhibit her paintings at a gallery in Chelsea.

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