I’ll never forget the first time I really saw a Sam Gilliam painting. I was wondering through the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on probably my fifth museum stop of the day and I walked into a room full of color field abstract paintings and stopped dead cold in my tracks, knocked back by the pure color and power in the gallery.

And then I saw one of Gilliam’s canvasses liberated from its frame hanging on the wall. I know I had seen his work before but that day I really saw it. Freedom, jubilation, liberation, organic beauty.