This is one insprirational story:

Carmen Herrera was born in Cuba in 1915, and started painting in the 1930's. Through six decades, she created her radiantly ascetic work in relative solitude, and never sold a painting. That all changed in 2004: at the age of 89, Ms Herrara sold her first painting.

With that first sale, her world changed rapidly. Collectors started to avidly pursue her, up to the point where her paintings have entered the permanent collections of institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Tate Modern.

Herrera has been on a lifelong quest to pare down her paintings to their essence, even though a large part of her work dates from well before the rise of Minimal Art in the 1960's. Wow!