Mose Tolliver

c.1920-2006 · Montgomery, Alabama, USA

Montgomery’s Mose T painted birds, turtles and gloriously frank self-portraits in house paint on plywood from the edge of his bed, and signed with a backwards S.

The life

Tolliver was born in Montgomery, Alabama; records put his birth anywhere from 1918 to the early 1920s, and he kept the Fourth of July as his birthday. He worked at McLendon’s furniture company until, in the late 1960s, a thousand-pound crate of marble fell from a forklift onto his legs. Unable to walk without crutches, he turned to painting, often working seated on his bed. The Corcoran’s landmark 1982 exhibition Black Folk Art in America made him nationally known, and he painted steadily until his death in 2006.

The work

House paint, which he liked pure and straight from the tin, on plywood, board and scavenged surfaces. Flat, frontal birds, owls, turtles, trees, watermelons and human figures, whimsical and sometimes cheerfully erotic, along with self-portraits, some featuring the crutches he lived with. Signed MOSE T, the S backwards. His work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and placed by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.

Why we love them

Front-on, no fuss, straight from the tin. Mose T is what confidence looks like when nobody ever taught it manners.

Go deeper

• Mose Tolliver at the Outsider Art Fair
• Mose Tolliver on Wikipedia
• Souls Grown Deep Foundation
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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