Howard Finster ORIGINAL SIGNED Wood Angel Cut Out on Stand 1996 Folk Art

Description

ngel Love You We Do To by Howard Finster Original Signed Wood Cut Out - nailed to pinewood stand with two small nails -1996. Measures 11.25" from wingtip to end of hand and 7" in height, from the bottom of the stand to the top of the wing.
The piece is a cut figure of an angel featuring kindred spirits painted the body of the angel on the front and signed on the front twice by Howard Finster.  .
The back side is numbered with 39000.184 Works and also signed by Howard Finster and additionally dated with June 10, 1996.  "Visions of the Last Days.  Jesus is Coming Back with Angels, Great Power and Glory. Keep Jesus Words Till He Comes Back and Be Saved. " All in marker.
A giant of the Outsider and Folk Art movements,
Howard Finster
(1916-
2001)
is considered the Grandfather of contemporary American Folk Art.  Howard Finster's album cover for the Talking Heads, his wild appearance on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson landed him on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, a documentary by the Smithsonian, and many other accolades are the signature of this artist, and his fascinating life story.  His work is collected by museums and galleries around the world.  I am the original owner. This is coming from my personal collection.
Finster was a Baptist minister and eccentric outsider/folk artist that
stated God charged him to illustrate his religious visions in
1976
when
​
''
A warm feeling came over me to paint sacred art.''
He was a larger-than-life personality with a devoted following long before he appeared on the Johnny Carson Show or in an R.E.M. music video. For his speaking engagements, he wore a powder-blue suit and had his banjo at the ready. He sang with a melodious twang, and he could yodel with force, but it was
his compelling
​
''
sermons in paint'' that made him a folk art phenomenon.
Born in Valley Head, Alabama, Finster was one of thirteen children. At sixteen he preached his first sermon.  In the
1940
s, he hosted a radio program and wrote a column for the local newspaper.  He led tent revivals and
​
''
pastored'' many churches. To support his wife, Pauline, and their five children, he was also a bricklayer, carpenter, plumber, and took up the
​
''
hard times business'' of bicycle and lawn mower repair.  He had a great sense of humor, which he used in the service of the Word from the bible.  He once said,
​
''
When I’m in big revivals, about the first thing I do a lot of times is to get the people tickled a little bit, get their mind off everything, then I get the message over to
​
‘
em.''
In the
1960
s, he began constructing Paradise Garden, a two-acre spiritual environment at his home in Pennville, Georgia. His plan was to display all the inventions of mankind. Embedded in the garden’s cement walls, walkways, and playhouses were Bible verses, accumulated bicycle parts,
TV
tubes, mirror glass, Coca-Cola bottles, junk jewelry, plastic toys, a mound of cement snakes, and his son’s tonsils ''
put up in alcohol.'' Finster displayed his paintings and plywood cutouts of Santa Claus, Elvis, Abraham Lincoln, famous inventors, and Bible figures in the garden, and it wasn’t long before collectors and the curious beat a path to his door to buy his art.
​
''
They’d come here and just blow up on it, so I’d just take the crowbar and start pulling it off''. He made thousands of works of art that often combine written words with his own vocabulary of visual images.
At home Finster would kick back on his studio couch with a chaw of tobacco in his cheek and carry on a stream-of-consciousness monologue for hours. Like a perpetual-motion machine, he seemed to gain energy from his own oration.