John Perates was born into a furniture-making family in Amphikleia, Greece, and learned to carve from his grandfather. After immigrating to Portland, Maine, in 1913, Perates found work with a manufacturer of handmade furniture and eventually established his own firm to produce furniture in the Colonial Revival style that was popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. When business was slow, Perates, an intensely religious man, read his Bible or carved ecclesiastical furniture and icons for the local Greek Orthodox church in a vigorous, idiosyncratic style. The church found Perates’ contributions to be too unusual, however, and stored the massive works in its basement, where folk art enthusiasts discovered them after the artist’s death in 1970. Portland’s Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church now contains a Last Supper and a bishop’s throne carved by Perates.

Perates’s carvings recall the Byzantine style of the artist’s native Greece, which stresses transcendental elongated figures, rich color, gold embellishments, and dramatic architectural framing. Perates specifically followed traditional dictates for the portrayal of holy personages: he labeled each saint with a name, depicted him with traditional symbols, and—most important—showed him in the frontal view that emphasizes eternality and direct engagement with the viewer. By isolating the evangelists in the moment of writing their gospels, Perates dramatized the immediacy of religious experience. Saint Matthew the Evangelist, pen in hand, points to his symbol, the angel who has inspired him to write his account. The angel in turn points to the all-seeing eye of God, divine source of all inspiration. Unearthly skin colors—pale blue and green—and elaborate frames carved with nonfigurative Byzantine motifs further separate these saints from mundane human existence.

Cheryl Rivers, "Saint Matthew the Evangelist," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 383.