FACES: Howard Finster, Appalachian Artist

All images courtesy of www.conterra.com, where a private collection of Finster's art is available for sale...

In 1932, at the age of 16, Howard Finster began to preach. And over the next 44 years, Finster preached tent revivals in his native Alabama, and in neighboring Georgia and Tennessee, and worked at odd jobs to help pay the bills.

Then in 1976, at the age of 60, Finster received a second call - a call to a new type of ministry. And that call has made him the most well known Appalachian folk artist alive today.

The Mystery of Visions of Other Worlds notes

In a variety of ways, the life and art of Howard Finster are a study in Appalachian culture. Finster was born in Valley Head, Alabama, about half way between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Gadsden. His preaching career began at about the same time as the Great Depression. And like most people in rural, impoverished Appalachia, Finster learned to do whatever it took to feed himself and his family: besides preaching, he worked as a plumber, a grocer, a carpenter, and a bicycle repairman. But since the early 1980s, his art has paid the bills...

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The call to paint

Finister's account of how he became a painter sounds a little like something out of the Old Testament - perhaps the call of Moses. At the age of 60, when most people are finishing up their life's work, Finster was working in his bicycle repair shop covering some scratches with white paint and the Lord appeared to him in the paint. He is supposed to have felt a sense of great calm come over him as a face appeared in the paint and a voice told him to, "Paint sacred art."

The Golden Road of Life Vision notes

His reply: "Lord, I can't paint. I don't have no education in that."

The face began repeating, "How do you know? How do you know? How do you Know?" and the volume of the question increased each time.

Finster obeyed the voice and painted his first work at that time. But Finster's first peice of sacred art has always baffled students and critics of his work: he painted George Washington (one of his childhood heroes) and used a dollar bill as the model. Many have since puzzled over the meaning of the word "sacred" for Finster; and some have seen a slightly cynical role for money in the overall equation of Finster's art.

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