Tolliver "communicates in a visual language all his own. The subject matter ranges from portrait to landscape and erotica with a lot in between, and yet his singular style -- flat, full frontal or straight profile, a muted palette, and did we mention flat? -- unites the motley content [which] reads almost like unprocessed emoji from an alien planet... " Priscilla Frank
Tolliver was born one of 12 children to sharecroppers Ike and Laney Tolliver in the Pike Road community, near Montgomery, Alabama. During the late 1960s, while working at McLendon's furniture factory, he had a severe injury where his legs were crushed when a half-ton load of marble shifted and fell from a forklift as he was sweeping in the furniture factory. After this incident, he turned to painting to combat boredom, pain and long hours of idle time.
After the accident, Tolliver saw paintings by McLendon's brother, Raymond, and he decided that he could do that too. The Mclendons offered to buy him lessons and teach him but he declined, wanting to create his own style. This is where Tolliver began to sign his work, "Mose T" with a backward "s." Tolliver's paintings would usually portray some sort of nature, animal, or even self-portraits of himself. He regularly worked with "pure house paint" on plywood, and things like door frames, or table tops, creating whimsical and sometimes erotic pictures of animals, humans, and flora. Tolliver's themes were drawn from his own experience and his flat, full frontal, painting style employed a muted palette. He crafted hanging devices for his work, and many of his later paintings feature a metal soda can ring for display purposes.
Tolliver's work has been exhibited in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, and at the Philadelphia College of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Relatives of Tolliver have imitated his style and signed their work as he did, making it sometimes difficult for collectors to find an original painting. His daughter Annie was also an artist.
How An Alabama Handyman Became One Of America's Most Beloved Outsider Artists https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mose-tolliver_n_7012390