All things bright and beautiful.

Mose T, A to Z: The Folk Art of Mose Tolliver by Anton Haardt Saturno Press, November 2004 $49, ISBN 0-975-38420-1

Eighty-nine-year-old self-taught artist Mose Tolliver approached his art if not in a singular fashion, then in a distinct manner from many other artists. After a debilitating accident in the late 1960s confined him to a wheelchair, Tolliver began using house paint, bought on sale, to create images of animals and nature; and he plopped his creations on pieces of plywood and poster board. This exercise of painting was meant to be therapeutic, but it proved to be the catalyst for the true artist within him to come forth. Tolliver then unashamedly displayed his creations in a fashion that was not so unusual in the South--he hung them from trees outside his house in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1981, Tolliver mounted his first one-man exhibit, at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. His stature as a first-class, albeit self-taught, artist had come, and his career has been flying ever since. Yet Tolliver once said, "I'm not interested in art. I just want to paint my pictures."

Mose T, A to Z is the first book dedicated to Tolliver's work. Haardt, an artist and gallery owner in New Orleans, befriended Mose and his wife, Willie Mae Tolliver, in the '60s; and Haardt's true heart comes through in the book, as Mose Tolliver's work is carefully laid out with pictures of the artist, his wife and members of their family. Yet it's the commentary from the man himself sprinkled throughout the pages, accompanying the images, that makes the book a worthy investment for fans of Mose, aficionados of folk art and curious readers everywhere.