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| Mose T painting in his home at his favorite work area-his bed. |
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| MOSE T Photograph By Henry Cadenhead |
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| "BIRD HOUSE" By Mose Tolliver |
Mose Tolliver, born in 1915 near Pintala, Alabama, lived most of his life in Montgomery. During the late 1960's, boredom and long hours of idle time spawned his creativity. Mose worked with "pure house paint" on plywood; creating whimsical, haunting and
sometimes erotic pictures of wonderfully balanced animals, humans, and flora.
A "Quail Bird" may glide over a cotton field, or a spread-leg
"Diana" may be straddled over "An Excercise Rack Bicycle. Self portraits with crutches were a repeated
image for Mose T.
Mose was dyslexic, which may have encouraged his artisitic efforts by limiting his reading and writing abilities. He would often turn his paintings upside-down and paint the picture
of perhaps an animal and landscape positioned from various directions. Tolliver's
titles exhibited a fantastic imagination; "Smoke Charlies,","Scopper
Bugs,"or "Jick Jack Suzy Satisfying her own Self." Tolliver's work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia College of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, and the Cocoran Gallery of Art. In 1993, a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. Mose Tolliver sadly passed away in 2006, after living
a full life. Mose T once said, "I paint because that is all I love to do. I reckon I'll paint for the rest
of my life if I'm able to."
MOSE T A TO Z: THE FOLK
ART OF MOSE TOLLIVER creates an intimate portrait of the
life of a unique African-American who overcame his disabilities through his art making. Injured
on a job, Mose Tolliver took up painting as a way to productively fill his hours. After several
years, Mose was discovered by collectors and his work now hangs in numerous collections
and has been included in many shows by famous galleries like the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC. .
Author Anton Haardt lets us see beyond the artist into the personality of a complex man
who took defeat and turned it into victory.
Haardt's book is a must-read
for art lovers. Mose T showed us all there is art in doing what you love and loving what you do.
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| Author Anton Haardt and Mose Tolliver , 1998 |
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In the winter of 1982, the American art world was jolted by a controversial exhibition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.The morning after the opening reception, art editors questioned in newspapers across the country, "Is this art?" That artist is the subject of a new book by Montgomery native Anton Haardt, entitled Mose T. from A to Z: The Folk Art of Mose Tolliver.
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FOLK ART Often created on discarded materials,such as grocery bags and roofing material, their paintings
are direct,powerful, and from the heart. The strength of these
artists work is their lack of self-consciousness as to what their art is or should
be. It is their sheer impulse to create, and there in its raw beauty lies its power.•˛Outsiders,•ˇ
with its romantic overtone, has been the most popular term to describe these artists.
They are self-taught , imaginative, and many of them have been isolated from the contemporary art world. Even
though eccentricity and isolation have in many cases nurtured their creativity, often they have been misunderstood
and shunned by their relatives, friends and peers.
The art is produced by untrained people who draw on their culture and experiences in an isolated world; made with a true, untutored, creative passion. It’s raw, and expressive.Anton Haardt has been interested
in this field for over twenty years ,and had over the years become friends with many of
the Southern Folk and these pieces are from her collection. Artists
such as Mose Tolliver, Jimmie Sudduth,Royal Robertson,Lonnie Holley, Charlie Lucas, and more. Royal Robertson, a sign painter by trade, was born in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. He has been scorned by his neighbors and has turned to obsessive records of his visions in imagery and writings.His drawings show his accomplished trade of sign painter in their proportional architectural accuracy.
--In the mid-1970s Howard had a vision. While using his finger to dab paint on a bicycle, he saw a human face in the fingertip. Howard
interpreted this as a sign from God that he should create works of art in order to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. From then until his death, Howard Finster painted almost non-stop. He slept
very little and painted detailed accounts of his visions and dreams.
LONNIE
HOLLEY creates large, figurative works that manage to look naive but sophisticated at the same time. His primitive recycled junk and sandstone scupltures are powerful,
as are his drawings. With no formal training he makes constructions from found objects and uses vivid colors, textures, and bold images. Lonnie explains, "People call me crazy. They
call me foolish. They call me Voodoo Man. They
call me Witch Doctor, but I am not a demon-maker. I’m just a reflection of what life is really like."
Folk artist Juanita Rogers was an uneducated black woman living in a dilapidated
shack outside Montgomery, Alabama. She had a powerful creative talent and mystifying spirit. Juanita´s crumbling sculptures
were made of mud, moss and bones: frightening evidence of compulsion. The haunting figures were part of Juanita´s
stories of magic stones, nuns and graveyard dirt.
Willie White created subjects are of fantastic prehistoric
birds, alligators, dragons and flying
horses, and his compositions are filled with bright marker color, a medium which he began to work exclusively in after the late 1960’s.
Sybil Gibson spent
most of her life estranged, from her family drifting between second-rate hotels and trailers across the United States. She was seized by an urge to paint on grocery bags,
and on this unusual canvas she poured
out her passions. =
- Jimmie Lee Sudduth painted with mud, spinach juice and sugar! He was on the Today show in the 1960's and climbed to fame
since then- He often was quoted as saying" Im the most famoust artist in the world!" Sudduth's
great paintings of Toto, Staue of Liberty, and Log Cabins place his work as one of Alabama's top self-taught artists.
Calvin Livingston was born in 1970 in Tuskeegee Alabama was included in the exhibition "Outsider Artists in Alabama" in 1991
and his work is included in the permanent collection of the St. James Place Folk Art Museum in Alabama AND in most HOB
clubs a juke joint type hammered tin pieces- almost too bold for most people...
JAMES PURDY-Cult author, poet and playwright James Purdy, whose fans ranged from Dorothy Parker to Gore Vidal
died in 2009 in New Jersey.HE IS KNOWN FOR his dark writing, as well , poems and drawings created over the past
half-century.( Haardt acquired these drawings directly from Purdy i the 1990's
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