Long was a housepainter for 25 years before his doctor suggested that he change professions due to health problems. Born in Florida in 1942, he was one of twelve children of a sharecropper and migrant farmworker. Long began working in the fields at age three, carrying water to seedlings. Field work replaced schooling as his family moved constantly "to where the work was". Long always had an artist's instincts; as a housepainter, he used to arrive at his jobs early to paint large memory scenes on the sides of buildings that he knew would be sandblasted and repainted. In 1988, he picked up his wife's art brushes and began experimenting with painting on more conventional surfaces. His talent was soon discovered, and his work is now in many collections, galleries, and museums in the United States and Europe.