Bill Traylor

Bill Traylor Synopsis

In collaboration with the estate of Bill Traylor, this publication offers a comprehensive look at the self-taught artist's distinctive imagery, which mixes subjects and iconography from the American South with a strong formalistic treatment of color, shape, and surface.

Born into slavery, Traylor spent much of his life after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation working as a farm laborer in rural Alabama and, later, as a shoemaker and factory worker in Montgomery. In 1939, at approximately the age of 85, having never previously trained or studied art in any formal way, Traylor began making drawings and works on paper using gouache and other media. Though he continued to make art for the remainder of his life, Traylor was most prolific between 1939 and 1942, creating a body of work that offers a unique and rich registry of his life, experience, and insights.

This monograph weaves beautiful reproductions of Traylor's works with essays by and conversations with his descendants, offering a unique and deeply personal look at this artist whose work exists in the collections of many notable institutions in the United States but whose story has never been fully told.