McKendree Robbins Long (1888-1976) was a Southern original, a larger-than-life character who could have stepped out of the pages of a Flannery O'Connor short story. Over the course of his eighty-eight years, he witnessed momentous changes in the world, especially in the American South, where he spent nearly all of his life. A painter, preacher, poet, and visionary, Long was passionate about life and about what he believed in, whether it was Prohibition, the need for a North Carolina art museum, or mankind's need for salvation through Jesus Christ.

The larger artistic community began to posthumously recognize Long's artistic vision when appreciation for "visionary" or "outsider" art expanded in the 1980s, but he does not fit com...