Howard Finster

The retired Reverend Howard Finster began painting in 1976 after a vision from god that told him to paint 5,000 sacred paintings. His paintings feature iconic images and figures from popular culture, history and religion, and were painted in a simple and naive style.

Finster gained national fame after his collaborative work with the band 'R.E.M.' He was also commissioned by the 'Talking Heads', and painted the cover for the 'little creatures' album.

I really enjoy Finsters simplistic uneducated approach to painting, his paintings disregard perspective and scale and have a definite naivety that appeals to me. I also really enjoy Finsters combintation of image text, his hand rendered text seems to rebel and defy all design conventions but these annotations and labels help tie together the strange juxtoposition of images.