Art & Creativity Quote by Howard Finster

The sentence starts like a conversion story and turns, almost sheepishly, into a business plan. Howard Finster frames his art-making as obedience to a “feeling” - not a career move, not a market strategy, but a compulsion with spiritual authority. That’s classic outsider-artist posture, but Finster isn’t naive about the world waiting outside the vision. He hears the call, then immediately hears the crowd.

What makes the quote work is its unguarded double exposure: devotion and anxiety occupying the same breath. “Sacred art” arrives with the promise of purpose, yet the next thought is criticism, the modern secular judgment that can flatten revelation into “taste.” Finster’s grammar - “then it come to me” - keeps the insight plainspoken, almost comic in its abrupt honesty. He’s confessing that faith doesn’t cancel insecurity; it just gives insecurity a louder stage.

The second problem lands harder: “my work’s not good enough to sell.” Not “good enough,” period - good enough to sell. He’s admitting a painful, very American bind for artists, especially self-taught Southern creators: your legitimacy is supposed to be proven by the market, even when your subject is God. That tension is the subtext engine of Finster’s career, which later collided with art-world fascination and pop culture (his album-cover moment, his sudden canonization) while still carrying the dread of being dismissed as kitsch.

Finster’s intent isn’t to romanticize struggle; it’s to document the exact moment inspiration gets audited by capitalism and public opinion. The sacred arrives, and the invoice follows.