Howard Finster is my favorite American artist. I was introduced to him by my Dad when I was younger; at first I just loved that he wrote all over his “canvases” and seemed a bit nuts. That he lived and worked in my homestate of Georgia only grew my affection. But, as I’ve grown up, the paintings, carvings and sculptures have come to mean more.
Finster was a deeply religious man convinced in a vision from the lord that he should paint. He created thousands of folk art pieces over his life, including his home, Paradise Gardens, which became an ever-changing permanent exhibit of carving, painting, paint-penning, chalk-drawing, sculpture, agriculture, and architecture. When he died the place fell into disrepair, but it has since been put under the protection of the state, and volunteers are working now to restore it to it’s former glory.
Finster’s un-precious, un-precocious, un-pretentious works of art are the mad, wonderful scatterings of a brilliantly fractured mind and talent. They’re so much fun, they look so good, they’re so honest and American. See them in the Smithsonian or in Northwest Georgia; they’re folk art at it’s purest and least complicated.
