(chill music) (chill music continues) Everybody got a purpose, and I done found out this is my purpose and it's gon' be done.

I believe that divine intervention is what is applied to me, because I have no control over it.

I've got to do this.

And it's not like it's a burden to do it.

It's joy.

I want my art to send a message, because that's what I'm appointed to do.

(chill music) (chill music continues) [Narrator] In 1969, the division continued its tremendous sweeps to keep the enemy off balance.

[Newscaster] On this July 20th, 1969, Armstrong is on the moon.

(chill music) (chill music continues) In the eighth grade, I got Fs in art and it kinda made me feel like that I wasn't gonna be able to make it in anything if I couldn't make it in art.

(chill music) (chill music continues) (chill music continues) My name is Toson and I am an artist and my artwork is my own.

I have no ties with any other art or trying to imitate anybody.

My first impression of Toson as an artist is that he was extremely passionate about the work that he was creating.

It came from a very authentic and genuine place and he felt that the importance of the message, what he was seeing, what he needed to put on canvas was the driving force for creating artworks.

When people see my art, I feel like they think that I am disturbed.

And some people, when they see it, they have inspirations and tears and they lose their breath, some people that come in here when the see it.

Every time they look at the wall, they lose their breath from the strikingness of all these paintings, and it makes some people feel good.

Having my art at my house is like having my children here.

It's just like having a lesson for me, 'cause the paintings are also teaching me.

[Chantal] I think Toson has created a world within his home with the abundance of art at every turn, in every corner, in every room.

I think he enjoys seeing it.

He understands that it is a labor of love and that labor of love, he feels comforted by being surrounded by it.

(calm music) I began drawing when I was maybe five years old and I would copy the coloring books that I had.

After I'd get through coloring them all up, I would sit me a piece of paper on it and trace over the pictures in the coloring book so I can paint 'em again on the paper.

I believe that might have trained me with my ability, with my hand and eye coordination to draw, just practicing tracing.

When I present a piece that has great meaning, I don't have to say anything.

The art has the power to talk itself.

I can be put in any place, dropped out an airplane, anywhere, and I can communicate with anybody.

Whatever language they have, I can communicate with art.

(calm music) My mother bought us art supplies because she was an artist herself.

Paint-by-numbers and coloring books and wood-burning sets that we were, you know, and spirographs.

♪ Spiromania ♪ [Narrator] Groovy designs, super designs.

You make them all with the world famous Spirograph, or the deluxe set, Super Spirograph.

[Child] Spiromania!

[Toson] She was training us to be an artist.

She wanted to instill that in us.

(calm music) Also, at the time when Toson was young, Jim Crow and segregation and some of all those other laws that were in place only allowed Black people to go to a museum one day of the week.

It was limited for African American families, especially in the south, and so for his mother to have planted the seed and to have sown that interest in him at such a young age without those resources readily available speaks very highly of her.

Because she was so integral to his upbringing and raising him in that way, it's made a lot of an impact on him.

(calm music) (calm music continues) When I draw, my mind is blank.

I'm not thinking about anything.

I'm just waiting for images to appear in my mind, and when they appear, that's when I put 'em down.

When I start drawing, it just flows my hand.

It's like going places and putting images down and automatic.

The images come from things that I've already seen It has to come from things that I've already seen, either in this life or another life, I don't know.

You know, I really can't tell about some of the things I paint because they are new creations, so I hadn't seen them before, anybody.

Nobody have seen them before because they are in my mind.

When I come out with them, it's like it's mine.

There's no comparison to it.

When I say this life or another life, my belief is that this is our second time around.

That time is still in us and it's sometimes like a deja vu with things that you do because you say like, "I did that before," and you probably have in that other life.

(calm music) When I was in elementary school, they kinda steered me to art because they had me to draw all the drawings that the school needed for all occasions and holidays.

And I spent most of my time drawing instead of reading, which came to be a bad thing for me, but they was just wanting me to draw all the time.

I was kind of slow, and when I didn't have any help, I don't know why my siblings didn't help me.

I didn't go to to kindergarten and I just started school, and that was kinda hard for me to talk because of my shyness and my not being able to pronounce the words.

I learned how to read from listening to Bible tapes.

(calm music) "I called upon the Lord in distress and the Lord answered me and set me in a large place.

The Lord is on my side.

I will not fear.

What can man do unto me?

The Lord, He taketh my part with them that help me.

Therefore shall I see my desire on them that hate me.

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man."

My heart I feel is influenced by the studies of the scriptures.

When you have that in you, that's what's gonna come outta you.

(calm music) My mom's artistic talent, I guess she was just born with it.

She had a desire to create.

Mom used to look at this artist on TV.

Hello, I'm Bob Ross and I'd like to welcome you to the 29th "Joy of Painting" series.

If this is your first time with us, allow me to extend a personal invitation for you to get your brushes and your paints and paint along with us each show.

She started painting real late in her life.

She had just about did all other art that you could name.

You know, ceramics and macrames and resin.

And she decided that she was gonna try it.

She knew how to complete a painting, and that's the most important part of a painting is to complete it.

(calm music) A place that inspires my art is in my mind.

I don't have anything that I can observe or another human can observe that I desire to paint because that puts me in the arena with everybody else.

I'm a creative artist.

If I can't create something, I'm not going to waste my time.

So Toson's work is hard to classify because it changes from so many different styles.

Most recently, abstract art has been an interest of Toson's, and so I think that along with most of the abstract movements, it's very much about color and form rather than the content.

People bring their own meaning to the work rather than Toson creating meaning within what he's painting.

But I think the majority of his art falls into the category of surrealism, which is a movement that focused a lot on dreams and the unconscious, what we see in visions and in our mind, and presenting that to the world.

Toson spoke a lot about how these visions come to him and how he feels obligated to paint what he sees and the messages that he receives, and that is very much in thinking with how the surrealists in the early 20th century in Europe were creating artwork.

(calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) She didn't even get a chance to see my first art exhibit.

I read two of the articles that they had and she really loved it.

She wished that she could see some of the paintings, but she couldn't see 'em because at that time, she was losing her eyesight.

(calm music) Mom died in 2000.

She would've been proud of me because she was an artist.

Toson is inspired to paint landscapes through the work that his mother left for him, and if you see in some of the work that has the symbolism and the surrealist aspect, there are a lot of landscapes as the background or the base or foundation for a lot of that work.

And so even in his creation of landscape paintings, which can have their own spiritual meaning to them, he's really using those as an opportunity to practice a lot of what's gonna go into his more surrealist work, because there's a lot of blue skies, a lot of water.

Even in his retelling of Bible stories and themes in the Bible, you'll see a landscape with mountains and a beautiful sky.

And I feel like some of the landscapes that his mother left for him also kind of inspire him to create some of those works.

(calm music) "Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall, but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and song and is become my salvation.

The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacle of the righteous.

The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.

The right hand of the Lord is exalted.

The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly."

(funky chill music) When I was in the first grade, I had a bully friend that used to call me Tosie.

You had to answer him or you're gonna feel his wrath.

I changed the Tosie around to Toson, and it took a long time for it to stick, but after I started playing basketball and I was excelling over everybody, oh, they loved Toson then.

(basketball court squeaking) (crowd cheering) When I started playing basketball and I saw that I was excelling more than the other guys, I was set in my heart that I was going to the NBA.

I'm good.

But you find out that if you leave this city, you find hundreds of people that is just as good as you.

(basketball court squeaking) (crowd cheering) (air rustling softly) When I got the job at Republic Steel, I was the happiest man on Earth, because Republic Steel was one of the highest-paying jobs in Gadsden.

And yes, I thought I was gonna work there till I was old, (air rustling softly) but they gave an offering of an early retirement when I was 37 years old.

I had been out there since I was 20.

17 years.

I took the early retirement.

It was unsure.

It was shaky out there, and eventually they shut it down.

(air rustling softly) (workers chattering muffledly) (air rustling softly) (saw whirring softly) If I wanted to term what type of art I do, I would classify it as being free.

My art gives everybody a freedom to feel what their inner self is and to feel the presence of God in them.

"I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.

The Lord has chastened me sore but He has not given me over unto death."

Destructive, it wasn't a great- -If you- -I have no need in watching television because everything that happens in this world today is written in the scriptures.

And I do wonder- [Toson] To get all the answers- [Panelist] Is this the way forward?

-I need is there.

And it's truth.

It's not fiction.

You said money and things- [Toson] Only thing that television does is puts you in a different frame of mind that you don't even wanna be in from watching what's on there, the violence and the deception and all that, when you don't even need that.

[Judge] It's you with the travel- So I prefer not to even occupy my time with it.

(calm music) I prefer reading biblical information.

I don't have any desire for any worldly information because it's fading away and I'm trying to leave it right now.

Actually, I feel like I done left it, but I'm still here.

And maybe that is my purpose, to try to steer other people into turning loose some of this stuff.

I was so thrilled to be baptized.

I felt like I was a part.

But I found no love in the church after that.

I'm being a young man, like seven years old.

I thought that if I would do what they wanted me to do, be baptized, that they would love me and accept me.

They didn't accept me, and with my personality, I didn't go back to church.

We were from a large family and at the church, they really didn't have no desire for us because they always thought that we was coming for a handout.

They thought we was just unfit for it and I can feel it and I just can't go no place where I'm not accepted, and so I don't have no affiliation with no church.

I don't have no need for it, because the Bible was written to each and every one of us and we should get in there and read it ourselves, because it's like a love letter He wrote to us, and if you don't read a love letter that somebody wrote to you and you want somebody else to read it for you, that's not love.

"The stone which the builders refused is now become the head stone of the corner.

This is the Lord's doing.

Is it not marvelous in our eyes?

This is a day in which the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

(chill music) (chill music continues) Right now I am fighting small cell lung cancer and thank the Lord I am winning.

My health with that now is great as long as I keep taking my medicine, and hopefully I can get to the point where I don't have to take that medicine and then I can just be back normal.

The 17 years that I worked at the steel plant, if it had any effect on my health, I don't know anything about it.

(calm music) To be called a genius is, you know, I never to be a genius until I looked up the word genius (calm music) and it had a lot to do with the way I am.

The original, the genuineness of my paintings makes it genius.

So I'm not a genius intellectually, but an artist?

I can accept being called a genius.

(paint brush rustling softly) All I want the art world to know about me, that I'm an individual and I am making a noise, even though they act like they don't hear that noise, but I know they hear it.

A house built up on the hill can't be hid, and if you got that light, even though they might not come to that light, they see it.

If Toson feels that he is content with just getting work created and he feels successful in being able to create as much work as he has, because there's so much, I think that should be enough.

But beyond that, I think there's some opportunity for his name and his work to be a lot more well known.

(calm music) The purpose of my painting is just to declare the works of God, and that's just the bottom line on it and that's all I'm gonna do.

I don't have any desire to please the public or the any nation about what they would like to see.

They gonna see this because that's what's in me.

He appointed me to declare His works with this gift He gave me.

(bright calm music) "Blessed be he who cometh in the name of the Lord.

We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord.

God is the Lord that has showed us light.

Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.

Thou art my God and I will praise thee.

Thou art my God and I will exalt thee.

O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good and His mercy endureth forever."

(bright calm music) I think I got a failing grade because they were trying to discourage me and what I was good at.

(bright calm music) (bright calm music continues) I'm hoping in the future that I might be able to present my work for all people to see in all nations.

If that doesn't happen, I'm content where I'm at.

(calm music) ♪ That ceiling that you'll never break ♪ ♪ That risk they say don't ever take ♪ ♪ That feeling that keeps you awake ♪ ♪ You can't let it go, no, you can't let it go ♪ ♪ That voice keeps screaming in your head ♪ ♪ You close your eyes in your bed ♪ ♪ And dream of better days ahead ♪ ♪ No, don't let it go, you can't let it go ♪ ♪ Don't ever give in ♪ ♪ I know that we can make it if we keep holding on ♪ ♪ Oh, I know you can win ♪ ♪ With love you're gonna make it ♪ ♪ If you keep holding on, oh ♪ (chill music) ♪ You gotta keep holding on, holding on each morning ♪