Happy Memorial Day! Today we spotlight this Patriotic piece by Reverend Benjamin (B.F.) Perkins, part of the RAM Permanent Collection.

Benjamin F. Perkins (American, 1904–1993)

‘Untitled,’ 1990

paint on Masonite with frame

Collection of Rockford Art Museum, Illinois

Gift of Diane and John Balsley

Poor Alabama farm boy, underage Merchant Marine, U.S. Marine and Presidential bodyguard, FBI agent, revival tent minister, celebrated American folk artist. All are chapters in the remarkable life of Benjamin Franklin “B.F.” Perkins. One of 18 children, his upbringing in rural Alabama involved more work than formal education. Perkins attended a one-room school for two months each year, with the rest of the year spent working with his father in farming and lumbering. Hard circumstances and his own hardworking nature took him through Alabama and Florida, picking fruit and cotton and working in coal mines. At 15, lying about his age, he joined the Merchant Marines and began to travel the world. Perkins joined the Unites States Marine Corps at age 17 and served on the security detail protecting President Calvin Coolidge. At 23, after working for the FBI for two years, he experienced a profound religious calling and followed it to become an evangelical preacher with the Church of God. Eventually Perkins returned to Alabama, settling near his hometown, and sought to establish a new Church of God congregation by building his own church. This very personal and spiritual construction project seems to have served as the inspiration for the artistic melding and expression of Perkins’s fundamental beliefs in the spiritual nature of man and his nation. His handmade church, constructed of simple building materials, was painted in red, white and blue motifs with decorated gourds adorning the walls and featured an entrance that was a replica of Christ’s tomb, with its door open for his congregants’ salvation. Gradually, Perkins continued to develop the use of art to communicate his religious and patriotic principles, often blending the two together. While continuing his ministry, he became a prolific painter. Perkins developed a rich array of visual motifs, including the American flag, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, depictions of his church, and, of course, the Statue of Liberty. He became part of a deep Southern tradition which includes others such as Howard Finster, who sought to use art as a means of expressing highly personal religious beliefs. Perkins’s rich use of text is part of this tradition, where the words of the sermon and the images of the painting become one. He continued his energetic life as a preacher and artist well into his 80s. Although his church was abandoned after his death, Perkins’s art has carried on his legacy and is highly sought after and collected by lovers of Southern folk art. His truth is marching on.—‪intuitiveeye.org