Robert Gilpin, Self Portrait, 1991, Acrylic on canvas, 24" x 20"
Who made them? Who paid for them? Why were these people driven to spend their lives warning folks they didn’t know about eternal doom and damnation? Along with the peaches, watermelons, and boiled-peanuts signs that linked the rural South of my childhood, my world was constantly warned of the good and bad of “eturnal life” to come. So, while I can’t tell you how everyone else that read that article in Esquire responded to it, I can say that I was on my way to Summerville to meet the Rev. Finster. As I plotted over a map, I figured that Summerville was about an hour out of my way as I journeyed back to Palm Beach to be best man in a friend’s wedding. One hour out of the way, one hour with this guy, and an hour back to the interstate—surely this preacher was worth three hours of my life?
Well, life has a way of making an unexpected turn in the road, and those three hours turned into six hours and, in many ways, into a lifetime obsession. Howard was everything I could have wanted him to be. Sincere, passionate, full of life; he was a walking talking version of his paintings. His theology was a bit jumbled, but he had concluded that God, far from condemning, was trying His best to keep every soul on earth out of “Hell’s Great Gulf.” As Howard envisioned it all (and he was prone to visions), Hell was a hard place to end up.
Rev. Howard Finster, The Shortest Message: Up or Down, 1987, Tractor paint on kitchen cabinet door, 59.5" x 22"
I went back again and again to Howard’s Paradise Garden in Summerville. I took friends there and spent many an hour listening to Howard play his banjo and speak of worlds to come. I was rarely alone in these pilgrimages, even when I went alone. As Howard’s fame grew, so did his circle of pilgrims. NashvilleArts.com
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