Reverend Howard Finster received a vision from God to paint and began to practice as a self-taught artist creating a prolific body of work. Before his death in October 2001, Finster created close to 47,000 works. He also created the two-and-a-half acre garden ode to God and humanity, the Plant Farm Garden, later known as Paradise Garden, in Summerville, Georgia over the course of a decade.
Director of the Keith Haring Foundation, Gil Valesquez recalls from his visit to Paradise Garden with Haring: "Howard was just incredible. Keith was just completely fascinated that this guy woke up one day and had never painted before - quite conservative in the Deep South - and woke up one day and said 'God told me to paint' and he painted. And a lot of the motifs were pure Americana - Coca Cola, Elvis everywhere. I remember walking around this garden with Keith and he was almost chuckling in admiration. He had lived a whole life and had no training and just started painting. I think Keith was attracted to the innocence of that and the purity of that. There was just something innocent and naive about it - it had nothing to do with the art world and nothing to do with aspirations to be a known artist and Keith just appreciated that."
Finster found joy in collecting and displaying his mass of odd objects and curiosities. Many self-taught artists have maintained and created their own museum environments, whether it be to legitimize their creative practice and pursuits or to attract and share their work with visitors.
“I built the park because I was commissioned by God. I started the Garden in 1970 about one hundred feet into the backyard, built a cement walk and put up a haul shed and started to display the inventions of mankind. My park is a memorial to inventors. The inventors don’t get recognition. They don’t have an Inventor’s Day. To represent them, I’m trying to collect at least one of every invention in the world.”
“To spread his vision to a wider audience, Finster designed record album covers for rock groups such as R.E.M. and Talking Heads, later earning him Record Album Cover of the year by Rolling Stone Magazine. Interviews, films, and his famous appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson further advanced his evangelical message. Finster’s preaching experience and his showman-like personality helped to shape his public persona and ever-increasing celebrity. The industry that surrounded Finster’s name ended up defining his final years. Finster’s intentions remained true to his inner voice—to make sacred art. Well-known and often misunderstood, his position is suspended somewhere between awe for his tireless, faith driven creativity and his esteemed place in the pantheon of contemporary American art. He has been called both “the grandfather of Southern Folk Art” and “the Andy Warhol of the South.”