Bro. Perkins, as he was widely known, was a kind and gentle man. He was a retired Marine and an ordained fundamentalist preacher. These professions gave him two themes of his work: country and God, flag and church (with its steeple clock always showing ten o'clock, the Sunday School hour, he once explained to me). The gourds, canvases, boards and sundry objects on which he painted in acrylics proclaim God's love for sinful man and simple, old-fashioned patriotic messages not only in the colorful images but in printed texts as well. His work thus sometimes bears a vague resemblance to that of Rev. Finster.

The third theme relates to objects from ancient Egypt, King Tut's tomb. There has never been evidence presented to indicate that he had seen the popular exhibition of the objects that was traveling around the country at the time his painting career was in its infancy. It is likely that he knew of the objects from some printed source such as the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine.  (...more below...)

He returned to his native Fayette County following retirement from the military and a failed marriage and settled in the country four miles from the remote Bankston, Al. Here he created something of a folk environment on a sixteen-acre plot of ground. He built a small frame church-the Hartline Assembly of God Church that was home to his small congregation. It was here also that was located his house with the exterior painted in patriotic red, white, and blue.

Inside, the kitchen walls were lined with painted cabinets, some of his best work he ever did. In an upper room, some of the earliest canvases he did were nailed crudely through canvas and stretcher boards to the wall. Those pieces bear the nail scars like so many stigmata. The house with the curved driveway, "carports", and upstairs porch was the subject of many of his paintings.

There was also a small frame building that stood apart from the church; it was the fellowship hall, he would explain. A bit removed from the house itself was a storm shelter lined with 50-gallon steel drums filled with water. He was only too happy to show the curious visitor this structure "built on specifications obtained from Auburn University." Still further from the house at the bottom of a gentle slope was a small, peaceful pond surrounded by pine and hardwood trees. The fishing was good there, he said, although I never tried it.

Following their father's death in 1993, his two daughters inexplicably had the fire department from Fayette burn the house to the ground. No one seems to know if the kitchen cabinets were removed or not. Today, of the house, only the foundations and the chimney remain.

All works offered by the gallery were obtained directly from the artist. The works were almost always dated by Rev. Perkins. A key to dating for works in which the word "heart" appears, however, may be seen in his spelling of the word. In 1987, apparently, someone told him that the word had an "e" in it. Invariably, to my knowledge, until that time, he spelled the word phonetically --"hart." He learned the lesson well and the old form never again, I believe, appeared.

REFERENCES:

Kemp and Boyer, REVELATIONS. ALABAMA'S VISIONARY FOLK ARTIST, 1994.
Lampell and Lampell, O, APPALACHIA, 1989.
Ricco and Maresca, AMERICAN SELF-TAUGHT. PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS BY OUTSIDER ARTISTS, 1993.
Chuck and Jan Rosenak, first volume, 1990.
Sellen / Johanson, both volumes, 1993 and 2000.