If A Shoe Fits, Wear It197713 3/4 x 19 5/8 x 1/2 " (34.9 x 49.8 x 1.3 cm)Acrylic and enamel on metal, in original pyrographed wood frame and backingGift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler2018.19.2301540952738P14.204P14.2000.4Howard FinsterPaintings© Howard Finster / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
A Man Lives in his ShoesA Man Lives in his ShoesA Man Lives in his ShoesSummervilleSummervilleUnited StatesGeorgiaPaintingsSummervilleObject information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information. To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgPAINTINGBorn in 1916 on a small farm in Valley Head, Alabama, Howard Finster preached from the time he was a teenager. He had served as a Baptist lay minister in congregations and tent revivals in the rural South for about thirty years when a vision in the 1960s led him to clear swampland behind his house and build Paradise Garden—a complex environment teeming with sculptures, assemblages, hand-painted signs, walkways, small outbuildings, and flowering plants and trees—as a testament of his religious faith. Much later, in 1976, he was directed in a vision to create “sacred art,” and he began a vast, numbered output of didactic paintings and constructions. Extensive biblical and personal texts, along with reflections on popular culture, history, and current events, played into his personal cosmology. Because of his talent and his charismatic personality, he found not only artistic recognition but celebrity. Though he became frail and maintained a somewhat softened apocalyptic message, Finster continued to fulfill his evangelical mission through his artistic output until the end of his life.
Finster used a shoe as a subject in several works, including a two-ton cement sculpture modeled on one of his work shoes. Of his vast artistic output, he said, “I worked all day and night, without even takin’ my shoes off, for months! I take my catnaps with my shoes and socks on, just like a soldier in the battlefield.” The shoe, he said, “represents being shod and it saves your feet from all the sharp rocks and it protects you, like Jesus.” Numbered “1000.10” (Finster numbered each of his works in sequence), If a Shoe Fits, Wear It is an early painting featuring a self-portrait emerging from inside a dress shoe.
Much like the nursery rhyme’s old woman in a shoe, Finster played the role of caretaker, tending to spiritual well-being as well as physical needs. His textual references are both secular and spiritual, evoking familiar rhymes, homilies, slogans, and proverbs. “Eph-6-15 And your / feet shod with / the preparation / of the gospel of / peace” is placed under a “Bible Shoe Store.” The painting also features the inscriptions “If you happen / to get stepped on / just get up and / keep walking” and “If a mans home / is his castle he / should wear the shoes there and rule his house.” The artist’s neutral palette of browns and grays is enlivened by the painterly brushstrokes of the turbulent background sky and the familiar decorative burnished-wood frame. A Man Lives in his ShoesA Man Lives in his ShoesA Man Lives in his ShoesA Man Lives in his ShoesP14.204P14.2000.419771977 2018 19 23 Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information. To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgPAINTINGBorn in 1916 on a small farm in Valley Head, Alabama, Howard Finster preached from the time he was a teenager. He had served as a Baptist lay minister in congregations and tent revivals in the rural South for about thirty years when a vision in the 1960s led him to clear swampland behind his house and build Paradise Garden—a complex environment teeming with sculptures, assemblages, hand-painted signs, walkways, small outbuildings, and flowering plants and trees—as a testament of his religious faith. Much later, in 1976, he was directed in a vision to create “sacred art,” and he began a vast, numbered output of didactic paintings and constructions. Extensive biblical and personal texts, along with reflections on popular culture, history, and current events, played into his personal cosmology. Because of his talent and his charismatic personality, he found not only artistic recognition but celebrity. Though he became frail and maintained a somewhat softened apocalyptic message, Finster continued to fulfill his evangelical mission through his artistic output until the end of his life.
Finster used a shoe as a subject in several works, including a two-ton cement sculpture modeled on one of his work shoes. Of his vast artistic output, he said, “I worked all day and night, without even takin’ my shoes off, for months! I take my catnaps with my shoes and socks on, just like a soldier in the battlefield.” The shoe, he said, “represents being shod and it saves your feet from all the sharp rocks and it protects you, like Jesus.” Numbered “1000.10” (Finster numbered each of his works in sequence), If a Shoe Fits, Wear It is an early painting featuring a self-portrait emerging from inside a dress shoe.
Much like the nursery rhyme’s old woman in a shoe, Finster played the role of caretaker, tending to spiritual well-being as well as physical needs. His textual references are both secular and spiritual, evoking familiar rhymes, homilies, slogans, and proverbs. “Eph-6-15 And your / feet shod with / the preparation / of the gospel of / peace” is placed under a “Bible Shoe Store.” The painting also features the inscriptions “If you happen / to get stepped on / just get up and / keep walking” and “If a mans home / is his castle he / should wear the shoes there and rule his house.” The artist’s neutral palette of browns and grays is enlivened by the painterly brushstrokes of the turbulent background sky and the familiar decorative burnished-wood frame.