Born into a family of eleven children, Moses Ernest Tolliver had to work from a young age. Married in the 1940s, he had thirteen children. At 40, a serious accident left him disabled when marble slabs fell on his legs.
Painting, initially a pastime, became essen tial during his recovery. Tolliver used wooden boards or various objects (guitars, chairs, boxes) to paint landscapes, animals, portraits, and erotic figures. He signed his works “ MOƧET ”, with a reversed S, combining musicality and repeated geometric patterns. His “Turtle Paintings,” which he considered self-portraits, reflect the slow movement of turtles and sometimes reference Bill Traylor, whose works he discovered in 1982 through exhibitions and catalogs.