American painter Velox Ward (1901 – 1994) was born in East Texas. He worked at a variety of jobs before he began to paint his first painting at the age of sixty in order to make a gift for his grand-daughter. Within several years Ward was recognized as a major creative contributor to the genre of ‘folk art’ or ‘primitivism’. Today such major institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, include examples of Ward’s art in their permanent collections.