Howard Finster

Howard Finster earned his greatest renown through the album covers he created for R.E.M.'s Reckoning and Talking Heads' Little Creatures, establishing himself as the leading figure associated with outsider art. Born in Athens, Georgia, he devoted most of his years to preaching until a divine vision in 1976, when he turned 59, directed him to produce religious paintings. His untrained, folk-art approach swiftly attracted a devoted audience, resulting in more than 40,000 works that collectors avidly acquired over subsequent decades. Already familiar to music fans for his record-sleeve designs, he began recording his own albums in the mid-1990s, first delivering the Smithsonian anthology Man of Many Voices and then issuing The Night Howard Finster Got Saved in 1997.