Messages at a skid row mission

Barely touched by time, the chapel and the dining room of the Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission, in the heart of L.A.’s skid row, are filled with the bold, earnest paintings of John B. Downey. They bear witness to a God who died on the cross to save the wicked, the evil and the depraved.

Pastor Carl Shriver, a mission board member, remembers Downey coming to Emmanuel Baptist about three times during winters in the early 1970s, and staying for about two weeks each time. “He was a black man in his late 40s, about 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with a 46-inch waist; a quiet man, not a fighter. He ate by himself in the back.”

Downey liked to start a line of text with a single red letter and then continue in black. He also used red capital letters to spell out words such as “God,” “the Lord,” “Jesus,” “Christ,” “drunkenness,” “hell” and “fire.” The color blue he reserved for “heaven” and “salvation.”

To prevent his images from being taken as an inducement to idolatry, Downey wrote under one of his paintings, in uncertain English: “Picture not worshipple, just illustration: Gospel is true.” Biblical quotations fill his works, and in one case, the text is painted as a representation of an open Bible. He warns us that because the wicked refuse to repent, God will take vengeance: They will perish, he will destroy them, and he will send them into the lake of fire.

Downey’s masterpiece, “Devil’s Juice,” depicts a black whiskey bottle rising from a sea of fire. On the shore in the foreground is a tombstone inscribed “A drunkard’s grave.” Looking at “Devil’s Juice,” one can sense Downey struggling to stay sober.

Downey’s whereabouts are unknown, and he is presumed dead. The mission, once a former hotel, goes on, sheltering about 40 men a night, serving about 4,000 free meals a month. And Downey’s art? One more way, said the mission’s director, Pastor Mike Davis, to deliver the word of God.

Photographer Camilo Jose Vergara’s book, “How The Other Half Worships,” was published in 2005. https://invinciblecities.camden. rutgers.edu/intro.htm