Simmie Knox, the first black artist to paint an official presidential portrait, is preparing to unveil his oil painting of former President Bill Clinton in a ceremony Monday at the White House.
"My mind hasn't completely wrapped around it yet," Knox said in a telephone interview from his Silver Spring, Md., home. "Just imagine: I was born in 1935 in Aliceville, Alabama, a sharecropper, and now I'm painting the president. Can you imagine that?"
The self-taught artist, best known for his portraits of black celebrities like baseball legend Hank Aaron and comedian Bill Cosby, also will unveil a painting of the former first lady, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.