self-taught
No degree, no teacher, no permission — just the work.
Paint Sacred Art
What does a 59-year-old Baptist preacher do when a face appears in a smudge of paint on his fingertip and tells him to start painting?
The Man Who Would Not Be Seen
What does the richest man in America do when a photographer finally catches him on the street at age 80?
Monsieur Le Blanc
What do you do when you're convinced Napoleon's army is about to kill your pen pal mid-proof?
The Soot and the Spit
What does a self-taught artist do when the family finally retires the wood stove and his only source of ink disappears?
The Man Who Found Troy
What does a man who made three fortunes — in indigo, saltpeter, and Sacramento gold dust — do for an encore at forty-eight?
No to Edison
What do you do when the man who twice tried to take your patent in court turns around and offers you a job?
The Painter Who Painted the Room
She started on Masonite, then cookie sheets, then scallop shells, then the breadbox — and then she ran out of small things.
The Hatchery Sessions
What does a composer do when the bulldozers show up before the last take is finished?
The Guest of Honor
What does it take for a toll collector who painted tigers in his off-hours to end up enthroned on a packing crate at a banquet thrown by Picasso?
The Weatherman Was Wrong Again
For ten years, a Chicago dishwasher kept a secret diary grading the local weatherman against reality.
Play a Strawberry
Who feeds a band one cup of soybeans a day for a month and calls it rehearsal?
The Rubber Man
The man who invented vulcanized rubber spent $30,000 he didn't have to build a palace of rubber furniture inside a building made of glass.