Bill Traylor (1854 - 1949)

Bill Traylor was born into slavery on the plantation of George Traylor, near Benton, Alabama. After the Civil War, he continued to live on the plantation, but in 1939, left because everyone of importance to him had moved on.Traylor’s wife had died and his nine grown children had moved away from the area. In response, he relocated to Montgomery, Alabama.

Traylor could not read or write, having never had an opportunity for a formal education. But at the age of 83, he took up drawing, and over a period of only a few years produced more than 1800 drawings. Sitting on a wooden box creating his work in downtown Montgomery, he gained attention, and was discovered—during the height of segregation in the deep South—by a white artist named Charles Shannon, who arranged for Traylor’s work to be shown at the New South Art Center in Montgomery in 1940.

His drawings are sophisticated, even if naïve by conventional standards. His innate sense of design is strikingly illustrated in the untitled piece shown below. The piece’s rhythmic rocking is created through a masterful use of diagonal lines and an overall triangular structure that cradles the implied seesawing movement. An unusual spatial sense, coupled with a unique vocabulary of shapes and symbols, underscores the authenticity of Traylor’s direct approach.

More than 60 years after his death, Bill Traylor is one of America’s most recognized folk artists.

(This profile will appear in Live and Learn: Expressive Drawing by Steven K. Aimone. Published by Lark Books/Sterling Publishing, to be released, fall 2009.)