Mose Tolliver Mose T signed Watermelon Painting on Wood Outsider Folk Art 10×9. This painting is 10 inches long and 9 inches high and on what looks like 3/4 plywood. Mose Tolliver grew up in the Pike Road Community in Alabama, born to a family of sharecroppers. In the late 1960’s, a load of marble crushed his legs and almost killed him. The accident left him unable to work. In 1970, at the encouragement of his former employer, he began to paint. Developing a signature wet-on-wet technique, Tolliver began painting animals, people, plants, fruits and vegetables, all in flat perspective, stylistically refined as elementary shapes and symbols.