Folk Art

I really enjoy outsider/folk art. Growing up in Alabama I had the honor of being exposed to, what I think and many other think, are some of the best folk artists of our time. People like Mose Tolliver and Howard Finster. My brother and I had the honor many years and what seems like a life time ago to participate in a juried arts festival with these 2 men and several other well known folk artists.

Mose Tolliver (he signed his painting moset) died last Monday at 80ish. My mother many years ago and very generously gave me one of his painting. A cross, crucifix really, with birds kind of like this one.

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I also remember that back when my brother was a photo journalist he spent a day with Mose at his home outside of Montgomery Alabama. As I recall it took some doing but Richard got him to agree to be photographed for the day. There are some really great photos from that day. I remember one in particular of Mose sitting on his bed where he painted, his bedspread covered with paint. He used to use it to wipe his brushes off. He was needless to say quiet a character.

I also, in my own wisdom, years ago visited Howard Finster's Paradise Garden located in a little town in north Georgia. There I purchased a wine bottle he painted. His work has been featured on a Talking Heads album cover, REM shot a video there. He received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to complete a pathway through his garden. When he was alive and in good health you could travel on Sunday mornings to a little house (he use to live in) just on the edge of his garden and hear him preach.

Both of these men were self taught artists. Both were motivated to make art even though they had no formal training. They, to me, are in a nut shell what makes the south such a interesting place to live. You could wander in and around there art, talk to them with out pretense or arrogance. They were accessible, even after they became "famous", even after folks from the big cities (like me) came in and wanted to buy and sell there work.

The works of folk art I own are by far my favorite things. They connect me to my roots and home unlike anything else I posses. I see them hanging on our walls and sitting on our furniture and I know I am in my house. I see them and I see the south, the south I love and romanticize, not the one that oppresses me and my family.