Obama Portraitist Gets Emotional: ‘I Will Shut up and Breathe’

WILEY: “You got it dead on. I was so in this zone. Talk about not recognizing the real source of the light. My mother, Freddie Mae Wiley, can you please stand? There is nothing I can say. This is really where it all starts. We did not have much, but she found a way to get paint and just the ability to — I will shut up and breathe — the ability to be able to picture something bigger than that piece of south-central L.A. that we were living in. You saw it, you did it, thank you.”