Artwork Details
- Title
- VISION OF A GREAT GULF ON PLANET HELL
- Artist
- Date
- 1980
- Location
- Dimensions
- 35 3⁄8 x 18 5⁄8 in. (90 x 47.2 cm) panel
- Credit Line
- Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- enamel on plywood with painted frame
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Fantasy — monster
- Allegory — religion — hell
- Object Number
- 1988.74.5
Artwork Description
"TIME TO STAY OUT OF HELL IS TODAY," Reverend Howard Finster warns in this vision of fire and brimstone. Finster was willing to try any and every means to save souls from eternal damnation. His favored tools for rattling viewers and fueling a sense of urgency were attention-getting colors, all-caps proclamations, and terrifying depictions of biblical beasts.
Finster was raised in Appalachian Alabama and Georgia where, from boyhood, he followed his calling to be a Baptist minister and preacher. Knowing that people didn't always listen to his sermons, Finster wondered if there were more powerful ways to get through. In 1976, after some four decades of preaching, a vision from God presented him with the solution: paint sacred art. At his home in Summerville, Georgia, Finster proceeded to build "Paradise Garden." Part outdoor church, part tourist attraction, the space was a sprawling and immersive art environment in which the preacher-turned-artist fused images, texts, and his own larger-than-life persona to deliver his powerhouse message of "the Word."