Jess’s story appeared in the local newspaper when I was a young teen. She’d been badly burned in a house fire. The front page image had been black & white. Try as I might, I couldn’t purge Jess’s pain or her image from my head.

I honored her in my way. The painting I did remains with me, as she always has, hanging on a wall in my studio, where I tell Jess how beautiful she is.

It was this painting that taught me the meaning of art.