Jackson Pollock for $5?

Tomorrow night, Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul woman truck driver from California, will star on David Letterman's Late Show – one of America's best-loved television programmes – telling viewers about her unlikely thrift-store find: a large-scale drip painting by the American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, the world's most expensive artist. Horton's painting could be worth $50 million (£26 million). "You ain't going to believe this," says Horton on the telephone from her mobile home in Newport Beach, 70 miles south of Los Angeles. In 1991, she popped into a thrift store in San Bernardino on the Californian coast to find a gift for a depressed friend. There she found a complex, chaotic abstract canvas that she now describes as "ugly", but nevertheless bought for $5 – knocked down from $7. Horton's pal was, alas, unable to slip the 48in x 65in painting through the narrow door of her trailer. Faced with the same problem, Horton put it in a garage sale. The story should end there, but Horton's life took a strange turn when an art teacher pointed out that her painting looked remarkably like a Jackson Pollock. "I said, 'Who the f*** is Jackson Pollock?'" recalls Horton, who relishes repeating her story. Research has shown that the paint on the floor of Pollock's studio matched the paint on Teri's canvas. And last month, aided by Thomas Learner, the senior conservation scientist at Tate Modern in London, Biro discovered a matching fingerprint on Naked Man with Knife, one of six Pollock paintings in the Tate's collection. The only problem is that the art world does not recognise forensic evidence. Horton was offered $2 million for her painting - she turned the anonymous buyer down. More recently a collector from Dubai offered her $9 million, but Horton will not sell her work for less than she believes it is worth. Teri is living on social security, but she's having so much fun...she's enjoying the ride. For the full story - click the title Irish Art