Walking into a coffee shop in the Garden District in New Orleans yesterday, there was what looked like a manikan, colorfully dressed, sitting on a shoe shine chair. The manikin looked awfully real to me. I watched (him) carefully and saw that his chest was moving up and down.

In about 20 minutes his eyes opened, ate a beignet and then started to climb down. I moved over to help him...he was quite old. I wanted to get a picture with him and he handed me a piece of paper. It simply said Welmon The Artist, YouTube. What follows is part of his incredible life's journey.

Welmon Sharlhorne, spent 22 years in Angola prison, Louisiana’s notorious state penitentiary. Born in 1952 – the fourth of 14 children – he grew up in rural Houma, Louisiana, during an era of harsh segregation. Leaving school without learning to read or write, he was convicted of robbing a grocery store in his early teens and spent several years in juvenile detention. Sharlhorne was 18 years old when he was sentenced to prison for extortion, following a dispute with a homeowner over his pay for mowing a lawn. A journalist in his hometown of Houma has noted records for some later charges, including another conviction for extortion in 1989. For that $10 crime, plus his previous convictions, Sharlhorne got another seven and a half years in prison.

“When I did my time, I had time to see how art could make me free,” said Sharlhorne, whose wild imagination took flight inside his prison cell. Before his parole in 1996, his artwork was already prized by collectors and had been shown at museums in the US and Europe. Though he has slowed down in recent years, Sharlhorne abides as one of New Orleans’s few remaining vernacular artists from the outsider art boom of the 1990.

It's amazing what you learn when you take the time to observe the people and the world around you.