BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- The price of a Mark Carder oil painting hasn't merely taken flight. It has soared, like the Marine Corps eagle, right through the ceiling of Carder's downtown Birmingham loft studio.

That's because the portrait artist, who previously has kept a low profile within the local arts scene, recently completed a life-size oil painting of George and Barbara Bush. Ordered by the Marine Corps University Foundation as a gift for the former president, the painting hangs in the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.

Carder donated the work, which took months to complete. The Marines list its value at $75,000 -- quite a jump from the $800-per-portrait Carder earned when he took up portrait painting 15 years ago.

"It definitely helps to have a president in your portfolio," said Carder, a Mountain Brook High School graduate who, having trouble deciding on a career, dropped out of college and taught himself to paint. [...]

"President Bush was so open with me. He asked about my family, and he talked about some of the other guys who've painted his portrait. He kept asking me if there was anything he could do for me. And he really meant it."

Carder spent a morning photographing the Bushes in their Houston home, which he found surprisingly modest. It certainly couldn't compete with a home on the Greystone Golf Course, Carder said.

"It was packed full of stuff, and all these pictures of the grandchildren. You could tell what was important to them. President Bush told me Barbara knitted their living room rug with these little animals representing each one of their grandkids." [...]

Carder, who attended Auburn, had thought about a career in computers before devoting himself to a childhood pleasure art and drawing. A family friend saw one of his early paintings and hired Carder to duplicate some classics to hang in a country club. An admirer of Rembrandt and Velazquez, Carder went to the Birmingham Museum of Art and learned to copy what he saw. Soon, family friends, and friends of friends, were hiring him to paint portraits.

For all his success, Carder doesn't take himself too seriously. "I don't think of my portraits as art," he said. "They're products. I'm not spilling my soul on canvas. I'm a hired craftsman. This artist/genius thing is a myth."