One day, as I was returning from a business trip, I stopped for a traffic light in a sleepy southern town when three little girls dressed in Sunday clothes and holding hands skipped across the road in front of my car. When I got home, as I typically do, I tried to write a story or a poem to capture the moment. When it wouldn't come and out of frustration, I went to the garage and with house paint on plywood I painted that picture. I seemed to fall into a creative trance, and when I awoke eight hours later, ten paintings were scattered around the garage.

From that time, I was possessed. The paintings were crude, folk, untrained; but I couldn't stop myself. I took my paintings to a friend who ran a folk art gallery and told her to tell me that they were no good so I would quit this obsession. Instead she said she thought they might sell and asked if she could hang them. That was ten years ago, and I'm still painting.

The truth is, I have no idea about art. All I can say with certainty is that if you see something that moves you, it's your obligation to tap the world on the shoulder and say, "Wow, look at that." If you see, then you do art, and if you do art then you see. Art helps us see what we might otherwise have missed.