Joe Dabney at Large
Preacher With A Paint Brush....Howard Finster   

By Joe Dabney

North Georgia folk artist Howard Finster had been ill for a long time and had looked forward to being "called home" to heaven. In the early hours of October 22, 2001, at his home in Summerville, not far from his beloved Paradise Gardens, his wish came true, and his effervescent earthy life came to an end.

His passing marked the wind up of an amazing artistic career, with more than 47,000 pieces of sacred folk art to his credit. Despite his prodigious output, and a worldwide following, Finster had long had heavenly aspirations. He repeated the theme often. For instance, on the back of his 1993 artistic recreation of Hank Williams, he ended his inscription thusly: "I am waiting for Jesus to take me home."

Often called "a preacher with a paint brush," Rev. Finster turned to art full time in the 1960s when he saw an image of Christ's face on a paint-smudged finger. He was painting a bicycle at the time, and he considered it a Sign from God. Along about that time, he was shocked and disapointed that members of his country church attending an evening service didn't remember the subject of his morning sermon. He decided God was telling him to readjust toward art as the way to glorify God.

I was privileged to visit Rev. Howard Finster at his Pennville Paradise Gardens, first in 1989 and again in 1990. I came away mesmerized by his wonderfully creative artistry and his world vision as interpreted straight from the scriptures.

One of the pieces I bought on the second visit ­ a self portrait when he was 43 ­ was prophetic. In addition to his "peace dove" autograph on the back, his inscription on a plate underneath read thusly: "By Howard Finster from God. Man of visions. Great people are remembered a long time. If you get your name recorded in Heaven, you will be remembered forever. You will never be forgotten again. Take the very words of Jesus by faith. Study them and you can become the member of God's family. Recorded in Heaven and Sealed for ever and ever. This world don't have enough riches to compare with God's gift to you. It is beyond knowing or seeing what God has for those who keep his sayings."

During our lengthy visits, which I recorded on tape while he continued working on his 13,000 series of paintings, we covered a number of topics, most of which related to man's relationship with God and to his fellow man.

He didn't set out to be an artist. "When I was building cabinets and working on houses," he said, "I painted little things on doors, just offhanded. I got to painting bicycles for poor kids, making them look pretty. Then God showed me Christ on my finger one day, and something said, 'Paint sacred art, paint sacred art, paint sacred art.'

"I talked back to that finger, 'I can't do that,' I said. Well it come to me again, 'How do you know you can't? How do you know?' And I said to myself, 'How do I know? I've done a lot of other things.' I just took a dollar bill out of my billfold and taped it on a piece of plywood, and I started painting George Washington's face off that dollar bill. And I been paintin' ever since. I closed my bicycle shop and gave everything to my son and I started paintin' art."

He showed me some of his unusual creations there at Paradise Gardens.

"I have visions of these great skyscrapin' mansions out in space, and sometimes I just see part of the top of them stickin' up over the mountains. I have visions of cities and things out there. I set down and draw them off and my grandsons put the white up" [plywood background sheets] and I put all the art on 'em."

He showed me one of angels flying around, "...and this is people on the earth down here in the Holy Land. It's all plywood and enamel. You can clean that off with a soapy rag. I put some of 'em in the garden. They stay out there for five or six years and kinda fade down a little bit, then people'll give you more for 'em than if they were new."

Finster recalled his growing up years at a country school. "My teacher's name was Richard Phillips. Some of the kids had syrup in the bottom of their bucket and a little piece of cornbread for the lunch. When we'd get a roll call of a morning, he'd have us all to stand on our feet and report (sic) the Lord's Prayer together. After that we'd stand and sing, When the Trumpet of the Lord Shall Sound and Time shall Be No More. That's where I got my religious teaching. And that's where I found out about God."

I asked him if he had visions in his sleep.

"I don't even know when I sleep. Working way past midnight, I go to sleep sometimes and mess up a piece, and keep on sleeping and paintin' on it. And then maybe I won't sleep none for ten hours."

His most famous piece of art is the eight-foot-tall Coca-Cola bottle that was displayed for a long time at the Atlanta High Museum of Art. It contains many of his visions, symbols and writings. His smaller bottle paintings are prized by collectors.

"Last night and yesterday, I got out and finished out six bottles. And I got to studying about how I hadn't made no scattered clouds and little hills around over the landscapes, and I rubbed paint on 'em with my fingers and put in the details and the people on 'em."

He showed me a painting he'd done of Mona Lisa "...and all them little animals over there. That one is Gabriel with his trumpet. 'When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more.' That's, of course, at the end [of the inscription], you know."

He described for me his techniques: "[I use] just regular plywood. Luan. I don't paint on canvas and junk like that. I paint on wood like that one right there. That's what God give us to work with. I take a little black and white [paint] and make all my gray [background]. Then I have to come in here and run the leg lines and the eyes and all that stuff. Then I can put little automobiles settin' in between these kings, little dogs and sheep and goats and horses and wild animals.

"I can turn this [painting] into a wild kingdom with nothing but animals. I wouldn't be surprised but where they ain't a animal heaven, because animals are very sensitive to God, you know. Animals are obedient to the instinct God put in 'em, much more than humans."

During one interview, as he reclined on a cot while chewing tobacco and spitting the juice into a can, Howard Finster expostulated on the shape of the earth.

"Talking about God creatin' the earth round: When you get up in space, the earth's the roundest thing you ever laid your eyes on. I have never seen nothin' no rounder. You see, God's first people, when He put 'em here, they looked up and seen the moon. It was round. They looked up and seen the sun, and it was round. And they started making round things. Like round cart wheels, round pans, round pots, round biscuits. They got all that from the round things up in the sky."

All of his visions and speculations, he said, come from the Bible. "I couldn't do without one bit of [the Bible]. I got to have the Old [Testament] to substantiate the New. I have to have the New to substantiate the Old."

Finster always believed in giving everybody a chance. "God works in strange ways," he said. "There was a strange boy late one evening come up with his pack on his back. I went out and told him, "It's getting late. How you travelin'?"

"I'm hitch hikin'," he said. He was from Chicago and was "huntin' for Paradise Gardens."

I told him, "Son, this is Paradise Gardens. You can set up your bunk on the porch of that building. Go on and spend the night in Paradise Gardens."

It looked like it tickled him to death. He got up the next morning, and he come up to me and just listened to me talk to people all day like I'm talkin' to you. I got after him about going home and trying to make something of himself.

When I got through with that boy, it was late the next evening. I told him, "Son, you don't have to start out tonight. You can spend another night in Paradise Gardens if you want to."

"My wife told me, says, 'Howard, you ortn't to let him do that.' Says, 'He could be a spy or a terroist or anything."

"You know what I told my wife? I said, 'My Bible tells me to entertain strangers. For unaware, you may be entertaining the angels. I don't know who that boy was. Gee, he may'a been an angel from God. God could'a been trying me out to see what I would do with a hobo. God likes to see something in us.

"And before God could even use me, I worked forty years for him, pastoring churches and preaching for practically nothing. And eatin' poor food and wearing poor clothes and fixing bicycles for poor kids. For forty years. Then he trusted me with his [sacred art], responsibility I got right now. I been workin' day and night for twelve years now, just to glorify God, doing something for God."

I'm sure Howard Finster today is up there in heaven, showing off his paintings of earth to his Heavenly Father. 

Joe Dabney is an author and speaker whose most recent book, "Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bred & Scuppernong Wine," a "cultural cookbook" in the Foxfire tradition, is in its 12th printing. He can be reached at joedabney@aol.com.