Portfolio of folk art and outsider art and Mose Tolliver

Portfolio of Folk Art and Artists such as Mose Tolliver

Saturno Press Home of Southern Books & Folk Art

Mose T painting in his home at his favorite work area-his bed.

"Self-Portrait" By Mose Tolliver

MOSE T Photograph By Henry Cadenhead

"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.

"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.

Author Anton Haardt and Mose Tolliver , 1998

The Tolliver Front Porch where he stacked Art.

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.

Visit www.antonart.com for more Folk Art

FOLK ART FROM THE DEEP SOUTH

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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, 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.

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THE ARTISTS

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.

Howard Finster- 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."

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: the frightening evidence of compulsion. The haunting figures were

part of Juanita´s stories of magic stones, nuns and graveyard dirt.

Willie White created subjects of fantastic prehistoric birds, alligators, dragons, and flying horses. His compositions are filled

with

bright marker color, a medium which he began to work exclusively in the late 1960's until his death.

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 House of Blues clubs across the country. His juke joint type hammered tin pieces- almost too bold for most people.

James Purdy, cult author, poet and playwright, whose fans ranged from Dorothy Parker to Gore Vidal, died in 2009.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 in the 1990's).

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FOLK ART AVAILABLE THROUGH SATURNO PRESS

001 Dial,Thornton Movie Star $4500.00