Former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan invited a quadriplegic artist to visit him in his Malibu home, reports the Mirror. An artist himself, though few may know it, Brosnan bonded with Mariam Pare, who paints portraits with her mouth, over their shared belief in the healing power of art.

At age 20, Pare was shot in the back and paralyzed. Her assailant was never caught. An art student, she relearned her craft, overcoming her inability to use her hands. Pare now sells her work through the Mouth Foot Painting Artists (MFPA) organization, founded in 1957 by disabled artists looking to make a living from their work.

“This portrait is incredible, of me as James Bond,” marveled Brosnan in a video from MFPA holding a painting of himself in character, posing with a gun against a bold red background. “This is just exemplary artwork.” During her visit, Pare gave the actor the piece, as well as a second painting of Brosnan as he appears today.

Despite her difficult circumstances, Pare paints remarkably colorful, cheerful works. “I think that solitude and pain and suffering… it brings out the best!” noted Brosnan ironically. “It’s really funny.”

The actor speaks from experience, having turned to painting for solace when his first wife, Cassandra Harris, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the late 1980s. Harris died in 1991, and her daughter, Charlotte, who Brosnan adopted, died from the same disease last year. He said of the experience, “I started painting, and I went to painting to express pain, emotions, to put down the agitation of the heart and out came color.”