Confounder of the wise

Howard Finster-79 years old, arthritic and diabetic-shuffles through the early afternoon glare into the humble frame building at the entrance to Paradise Gardens, Ga. Though his activities are limited, and he even paints from his bed now, he makes an appearance every Sunday for reporters and "fans." His navy blue business suit, of knit polyester, glints in the southern sun; the pants cuffs had been rolled up over white socks and shiny wingtips, exposing previous hemwork done with pinking shears. Unbuttoned shirtcuffs are bunched in his coatsleeves.

Mr. Finster's tie, a print of his own design, is inscribed with the message, "Your on my mind." (His spirit is willing but his spelling is weak; this article quotes the messages on his works of arts just as he writes them.)

Mr. Finster sits down and, fishing a plywood cutout painting from his oversized plastic Coke bag, begins inscribing a "message" on the back with a laundry marker. He never stops working; it took constant work at many trades to support his family for most of his life, and he doesn't know how to stop now. He's concerned, though, about the appearance of laboring on the Sabbath, and explains that he spends Sunday writing messages on the backs of his paintings, just as he used to bring a Sunday message as a preacher.

The Finster fame has spread far beyond American shores. (WORLD shared its interview with a Japanese camera crew.) Mr. Finster is the most widely exhibited living American artist, according to the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. His paintings have been shown at museums around the country and around the world. Works have been commissioned by Coca-Cola, Disneyland, Time, MTV, and rock groups Talking Heads and R.E.M.; Mr. Finster has appeared on the Tonight show and in Rolling Stone. By any earthly standard, he's a roaring success, and utterly beloved by many.

Not bad for a Georgia country preacher who is better known by New York City art sophisticates than his fellow believers. Today, the demands of age and health and fame exact their toll. Five years ago, Mr. Finster's garden/gallery was blooming with artworks; now it looks neglected and shabby, the arresting, urgent pieces (on an oil drum lid nailed to a tree: "dying daily is a greator sacrifice than dying dead") either gone to someone's penthouse or rusted and rotted to virtual unreadability. Random strings of colored plastic tubes clack in the wind, broken and faded.

From the age of three Mr. Finster was prone to "visions" and "messages," he says, so it was not out of the ordinary when, in 1970, the long-time preacher felt commanded to "build a paradise and decorate it with the Bible." He bought a few marshy acres in Pennville, Georgia, 80 miles north of Atlanta, and began to fill it in. At first there were just a few concrete items, and Bible texts painted on hardboard. But in 1976 came a second call, he says: In the course of a bike repair, a smudge of white paint on his finger developed a face and spoke to him: "Paint sacred art!"

Soon his vividly colored apocalyptic works, filled with angels and scriptures and admonitions to repent, were being nailed to every building and tree in the garden. And soon northern art dealers began plundering his work, paying Mr. Finster small change, then fetching hefty sums from jaded collectors enthralled with his hope-filled art and messages.

It's not clear, however, whether such collectors have always grasped Mr. Finster's real message. For instance, the centerpiece of the 1990 Smithsonian exhibition was Mr. Finster's portrait of art collector Herbert Waide Hemphill. On the painting Mr. Finster inscribed a typical message: "He That Believeth Not Shall Be Damned. Not A Crown But Hellfire And Brimstone. If You Only Had One Sweet Son And You Gave His Life To Save Ten Wicked Men. And They Returned And Denied That You Gave Your Only Son For Them And Said You Child Never Exist No One Died For Us. Please Go Right Now And Call You Child To You And Measure You Love For Him And Turn And Look At The Most Sinful Man You Know And Think If You Would Trade Your Presus Son For Him. God Is Love."

Next to the painting the Smithsonian affixed a plaque analyzing the work's meaning: "The historical, popular, and biblical subjects of Finster's portraits embody his concept of the inventor as someone whose creative process will provide the world's salvation."

In the little sales room on Mr. Finster's garden grounds, the price of paintings is twice what it was five years ago-Mr. Finster finally realized art dealers were using him-but the quality has slid down, the freshness replaced by formula. Empty paint cans, bottles, even a floodlight bulb, are daubed over with his repetitive trademark angels and hung with pricetags from $50-150. Yet Mr. Finster seems no huckster, rather guileless, and hard-working-probably more so than his health should bear. His interviews these days lack the fiery sermonic quality of the past, but with prodding he speaks again of his art's true meaning.

For WORLD's interview, Mr. Finster sits in an old chair in the busy room where his paintings hang for sale. Reporters are welcome to sit on the floor; there is no other chair. Autograph seekers constantly interrupt him, gawking with grateful awe. His hands tremble as he misspells fans' names, but no one minds. He pauses while signing a poster to answer, matter-of-factly, this question:

WORLD: Why do people like your work so much?

Finster: Several different reasons. I do messages, for the spiritual people that believes in my messages, to try to help people to take care of the world, get it back in shape, I do messages on peace among men, I done a big message on world-come-together, I been preaching on things like that for several years.

WORLD: When you first started doing this work, your whole message was to bring people to salvation, to call them to repentance. Have you gotten away from that message over the years?

Finster: God called me into the minister work. I got crowds of mixed-up people in my tent meetings, Catholics, Methodists, Church of God, all kinds. How I got started with this work, I pastored churches for close to 40 years, and I thought I'd run a survey one day on the members of my church. I asked them in the night service what I'd preached on in the morning service, and they wasn't anybody there that remembered that. And I said to myself: "They're not paying much attention to me. What am I gonna do? Lord, I want to preach all over the world and reach more people." Then God called me unto sacred art, got to putting messages on it.

I had a little experience a year ago with the biggest network in the world, and that was MTV in New York. And I done them a $15,000 painting. On the back of that painting I done a special painting for free; I didn't charge 'em nothing for it. It told what the prophet said was gonna come to pass, and it's now coming to pass. Like the prophecy that a whirlwind will come up in the last days from the coast of the earth; that was the one that come up from Florida, there! Another one says, in the last days they shall be lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, you can look on the TV one time, you can see that.

WORLD: But wouldn't you say that MTV is one of the places that promotes the love of pleasure?

Finster: I'm not condemning pleasure, I like pleasure myself, I like to go to a ballgame sometime and see my grandson play. I got nothing against pleasures. But he said, they would be more lovers of that than they would of God. Well, go around and look at the churches, and then look at the ballfields and all of that, and you see the Bible is fulfilling.

WORLD: In the light of this, what is your message to the world?

Finster: My message is, I am as a red light of God in this world. I was sent here to give my visions, and I have many of them.

WORLD: If the end times are coming, how should people respond to that?

Finster: Be ready! That's all I tell 'em!

WORLD: How do you get ready?

Finster: Jesus Christ come here and he was crucified as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. The Buddhists still practice that, but they use cows and blood and animals and things. We use Christ, that's the only difference. They're just as sincere about their offering as we are, but they don't offer nothing to Christ for savin' 'em, they offer it to their own gods.

WORLD: Can their own gods save them?

Finster: No, they don't realize that, and it's hard to get 'em to understand that because they was raised up that-a-way. Lately, they been sending troops out there to guard their gods, keep 'em from being destroyed.

WORLD: Really?

Finster: If I had a god that had to take an army to protect it, I wouldn't serve that kind of a god. But they will. They believe that their god saves 'em, but really it don't. I'd like to see them changed. Now missionaries over there got a pretty good bunch, they got 'em believing in Christ, you know.

WORLD: Do you remember the portrait you did of Herbert Waide Hemphill?

Finster: Last time I seen that it was at the Smithsonian. I tell you, there's a lotta detail.

WORLD: The Smithsonian put a sign next to this painting that said, "The historical, popular, and biblical subjects of Finster's portraits embody his concept of the inventor as someone whose creative process will provide the world's salvation." Do you agree with that- that the inventor, the artist, provides the world's salvation?

Finster: Probably some people mean different kinds of salvation. I'm talking about the salvation of Jesus Christ, that's what you gotta have.

WORLD: Is it frustrating to you when people misunderstand that message?

Finster: Some people don't understand nothing about the Bible, 'cause they never have read it. My vision right now is to lead the world to the Bible. Many people have come in here, they're not looking for a piece of art, they're looking for a message. A lot of 'em look on the back of the art and read the message I put there, and they buy it on account of the message.

WORLD: What more do you hope to accomplish in your life?

Finster: I don't really know what I've accomplished. Sometimes I get uneasy about myself and wonder if I'm ready, and wonder does God love me, would I go to heaven if I die now. Some things all come to me, and I know I've been borned again, and I know I've been saved. And I know God has been with me many times, and the spirit of Jesus has been with me, and I seen angels.

WORLD: How do you get saved?

Finster: Well, the Bible says, Jesus says, "He that knoweth these sayings of mine"-which is not no big lot of them, but they are enough to get you saved-"and doeth them shall never see death." I seen my daddy die of cancer, and he went to sleep. My mother went to sleep. I'm not planning on even dying. If I keep his sayings, I'll go to sleep.

Another place it says, "Whosoever believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." That's how you get saved, you believe in Jesus Christ. That didn't come from college or universities or doctors of divinity. You know what the facts is when you hear it, it don't matter whether you're a theologist or what you are.

WORLD: You used to preach this way every Sunday, I guess.

Finster: Then it was common messages of Christ and salvation, you know, now I have great sermons and national sermons that comes to me of things that's gonna happen. I waited for AIDS to get here. I lived to see leprosy conquered, an unincurable disease for hundreds of years.

But a prophet said, "In the last days a grievous sore shall come upon them." Well, to me that grievous sore is AIDS and radiation cancer, that's on us right now, and our universities and scientists and everything not even realizing that these things is coming true, and God giving 'em to me sitting here crippled up and putting 'em on my boards for them to read.

I won't speak no more in these big universities. It was a miracle to me to do that, because I never thought I'd even get to go inside one of them big universities. At Richmond, Va., I got $300 a day for teaching folk art, and that's a pretty sophisticated place. God had that planned for me to show them people something.

For 50 years I've had a vision of leading the world to the Holy Bible. In it they'll find eternal life, they'll find how to get to heaven and escape hell, and I'm asking you to buy your own Bible, do your own reading, and see how simple it is to understand. You don't have to go to Bible school or hear a pastor. If you can't understand it, you're pitiful. You're in the same shape I am.

WORLD: Some people read it and they don't want to believe.

Finster: There's a way of proving it to 'em. You give me a person that don't believe in Jesus, just let me have one hour with him, and when I get through with him if he don't believe in Jesus, I consider him to be a fool.