Art By Paco - Paco's Friends

This space is devoted to profiling Paco's fellow Texas artists. More will be added in the coming months. Please email us if you have any questions.

It is profoundly moving to come across a true soldier of the arts like Reverend Seymour Perkins, born 71 years ago in Halettesville, Texas. For the unassuming Perkins, making art is a consuming passion that is sincerely God-inspired. His craft is also a tangible extension and reflection of an extraordinarily difficult life.

Not only does Reverend Perkins lack formal art training, but he is disconnected from both the art world and, often, objectivity. This dissociation comes as no surprise when considering that Reverend Perkins' surroundings consist of a nightmarish inner city realm of drug users, poverty, and random violence that includes the murder of Perkins' loves ones. His obsessive pursuit of art, primarily taking the form of wooden carvings but increasingly expanding into painting (through Paco's encouragement), is his way of asserting control and establishing order in otherwise chaotic, unpredictable and often violent circumstances.

It is only gradually that one can piece together a life story of the Reverend -- peeling off the layers that separate objectivity from his flights of fanciful yarns and imagination. In conversation, he weaves in and out of cryptic random, truncated anecdotes.

While much can be taken with a grain of salt, there is little doubt that for the artist and beholder alike, the Reverend's art truly transcends the confines of the grim inner city world where Perkins battles for physical and spiritual survival day in and day out. Particularly fascinating are his wooden carvings of canes, old pieces of scrap furniture and any other article that would make a viable medium. The Reverend studies each piece obsessively before carving, asking for Divine guidance before setting out in his task. He insists that he is bringing out the preordained forms that already exist in the wood -- the way God intended. His artwork is the intersection between the idylic world he hopes to establish and which he inhabits in his imagination and his grim physical surroundings. He painstakingly extracts the beauty in that which has been overlooked, discarded or abandoned. A case in point are the exceptional carved shoe forms below, which he rendered into Man And Wife (2001).

Life has not been kind to the Reverend, but Faith has given him the inspiration and an unshakable sunny disposition to rise above the hopelessness of his inner city neighborhood. His is a compelling story of perseverance. Over many visits, scant glimpses into several tragic facts have emerged: His daughter was murdered in a drug deal a few years ago; two sons have served jail terms on drug charges; and his Church (a structure which stood adjacent to his home) was burned to the ground in 1999 -- an act of arson he alleges was committed by his daughter's murderers. Newspaper accounts of the inferno of November of 1999 support his suspicions.

Crime and drug use are evident throughout his neighborhood. On any given day, a parade of broken-down abusers will casually barge into his home, asking for handouts and willing to do menial work in exchange for some food and a momentary sanctuary from the outside world. The Reverend, himself a devout Christian, tries to counsel these visitors. But most are in disrepair beyond the Reverend's capabilities. Perkins' own focus in recent years is less towards his flock of transients and is increasingly toward his art and a melancholic yearning to rebuild his Church. He increasingly focuses on his own path of salvation though art and continually revisits, in his mind and out loud, the traumas of arson and premature deaths of loved ones brought on in recent years.

On the concrete slab where his Church once stood next to his dilapidated home he is piecing together an open-air environment, complete with an oversized plaster statue of Martin Luther King, crosses improvised from old found lumber and furniture fragments, a sun-bleached plaster figure of Christ, and a podium from where he preaches to any who will listen.

Often one sees glimpses of clarity in Reverend Perkins. He is obviously very literate, and maintains an elaborate written chronicle of milestones in his later years, particularly the aforementioned personal tragedies. These diaries consist of near stream of consciousness narrative that, albeit disjointed, is well-penned and enjoys a sophisticated vocabulary that belies the simple, self-deprecating man and his humble surroundings.

As for his artwork, it is an understatement to say that the Reverend is of a caliber befitting the top ranks of African-American outsider art. He is in the process of being discovered. Unfortunately his artwork has been overlooked even by many who have bought his carved walking sticks -- by far his most prolific output. For many visitors, the usually animated Reverend is a novelty act -- a tourist attraction. But to ponder the depth of his suffering, the extent of his perseverance, and the uncanny manner in which he has channeled this trauma to devote himself to the Lord though his preaching and artwork is a testament to how faith can move mountains. He is an eternal optimist, and a can-do visionary artist. Below is an image of Queen of Sheba -- one of his masterworks, of lifesize proportions.

Urban outsider artists like Purvis Young produce artwork that reflects the plight of inner city life and a foreboding resignation to that fate. But while Reverend Perkins' physical surroundings are not dissimilar from Young's, the former's art constititutes escapism into a benevolent realm of historic majesty and Biblical Utopia. Often the Reverend's subjects include African kings and queens; pastoral negroes (his term); Pharoah; Hannibal; and other Biblical or mythic figures carved from pieces of wood small enough to fit in one's hand to near-lifesize works tediously extracted from old tree stumps. He also pays tribute to modern larger than life personas that include Nelon Mandela, John Kennedy, and basketball star David Robinson.

It is quite rare for the Reverend to produce art that is suggestive of the dire environment he inhabits. But when he does decide to capture his personal situation and reflect it through his art, the impact is dramatic. Below is a lifesize carving of Three Time Loser, an exceptional masterwork depicting his incarcerated son.

One of the most remarkable things to learn about the Reverend is the fact that he has only been carving in earnest for about five years. He usually initials and numbers his carvings, with an output that probably numbers around 400 pieces since he began in the mid 1990s. A majority of these works perished in the 1999 blaze.

He also shows exceptional variety in both media and degree to which he is willing to finish specific pieces. Some he decides to leave in a primitive, unfinished state. Others he will obsessively rework and sand down and will only very reluctantly agree that they are completed works.

Paco has encouraged the Reverend to explore painting as well -- something which the latter hesitantly agreed to. Once he began though, he was hooked. Among his first works as a painter was God Laughs shown below -- spontaneously combining elements of Mose Tolliver's improvisational style, Richard Burnside's use of color and dependence on African motifs, and Joe Louis Light's sense of urgency of spreading profound truths and Gospel though art. All of this the Reverend managed from his insular vantage point when left completely to his own devices.

Clearly Reverend Perkins is a master who, despite his years, is only now beginning in his exploration of where his art will go. I have agreed to help the Reverend make a steady income and get the stability necessary to rebuild his life and pursue his passions to rebuild his ministry. These auctions will go toward that end.

There is no question in my mind that these efforts will also lead galleries and scholars to discover Reverend Perkins and give him the recognition he so obviously deserves.