Most of us know Michael Jackson as the boy who could sing and dance like nobody else. His mother, Katherine Jackson, remembers another side of him that didn’t happen on any stage.
Michael loved to draw.
Katherine is the mother of all nine Jackson children, the woman who raised Michael and his brothers and sisters. In 2012 she sat down with Piers Morgan on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” to talk about her famous son. The show aired on May 19, 2012, and the two of them talked about Michael’s love of art.
“Michael loved art a lot,” Katherine said.
She meant all of it, too. “He loved paintings, he loved water colors. He loved even the crayons.”
It’s a sweet thing to hear a mother say. You can almost see a little boy sprawled on the floor with a box of crayons, long before the world knew his name.
Piers Morgan wanted to know where the skill came from. “Was he self-taught? Did he teach himself?” he asked.
“He taught himself,” Katherine answered.
Katherine wasn’t alone on the set that night. Michael’s longtime friend, the artist Brett Livingstone Strong, joined her, and seeing the two of them together makes this interview worth your time.
Katherine Jackson and artist Brett Livingstone Strong talk with Piers Morgan
So if nobody taught Michael, where did the gift come from?
Katherine had an answer ready, and it may surprise you.
It came from his father.
A lot of people only know Joe Jackson as the manager behind his sons’ music. But Katherine shared a quieter side of him. As she put it, “his father was an artist, too. He loved to paint and draw.”
That’s a lovely thing to learn about Joe. He had a creative streak of his own, and his son ended up with it.
Brett Livingstone Strong added a short line that night that says a lot. Talking about Michael, he said, “He loved his father.”
And Katherine had one more proud mom moment to share. While Michael was in school, his drawing was good enough to be chosen for something special. His school “took one of his drawings and put it on the front of the yearbook.”
Think about that. Long before the hit records, a young Michael Jackson already had his artwork on the cover of a school yearbook. Katherine didn’t name the school or say how old he was. She didn’t need to. It’s clear she was still proud of it.
Brett is an artist himself and was Michael’s friend for a long time, so he’s a good person to hear on this subject. In this clip he talks about a Michael Jackson painting.
Brett Livingstone Strong talks about a Michael Jackson painting
It’s easy to forget that Michael had interests away from the microphone. His mother says art was one of them, right down to the crayons.
And according to Katherine, nobody had to teach him. He got the talent from Joe and worked the rest out by himself, one drawing at a time.