Artworks

Bill Traylor (1853-1949)

Artist Bill Traylor was born into slavery in 1853, and continued to labor on a plantation after his emancipation until 1908, when he was 55 years old. After moving on from the plantation, Traylor continued to work a variety of laborious jobs, however it would take another 30 years for him to begin his artistic practice. Around 1939, when Traylor was no longer capable of physical labor, and was sleeping for free in the back of a funeral parlor, he began to make art with whatever materials were at hand. With cardboard, pencil stubs, and tempera paint, Bill Traylor created images of animals, people, and dynamic scenes. Eventually, he was discovered by the local artist Charles Shannon, who collected Traylor’s work and introduced it to outsider art circles. 

Traylor’s oeuvre consists of a variety of images, from rusty brown barking dogs on cardboard to royal blue drunks on paper. Over the course of three years, Traylor produced over 1,200 drawings that are of crucial significance to American art and history. Today, his work can be found in several museums and collections throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and many more.