William "Bill" Traylor

Bill Traylor was born a slave on the George Traylor plantation near Benton, Alabama in 1854. He lived there as a farm hand for eighty years. in 1938, after the death of his wife and the Traylors, he moved to Montgomery. One day, at age eighty-five, Traylor began to draw while sitting in front of a pool hall on Monroe Street. Using a pencil and a piece of cardboard, he drew simple images from his life on Monroe Street. A young Montgomery artist, Charles Shannon, noticed Traylor sitting on his box and working intently. Shannon befriended him and made regular visits to see Traylor ...., bringing him supplies and a few dollars a week. Traylor's drawing technique was quite deliberate: using a block of wood as a straight edge, he rendered a basic geometric form and built the rest of the image around that initial shape. His composititons gradually became more complex, while his media expanded to include crayons, watercolors and gouache. In 1942, Traylor left Monroe Street to live with his children, at which point he stopped drawing. He was placed in a nursing home in 1947 and died shortly thereafter.Source: Driven to Create: the Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught & Outsider Art Milwaukee Art Museum, 1993According to "Wos Up Man: Selections from the Joseph D. and Janet M. Shein Collection of Self-Taught Art", the artist may have lived as late as 1949. Thus, one might see any combination of 1854 - 1949 for his life dates.Additional Resources:"Bill Traylor" Exhibition Catalogue, Luise Ross Gallery, New York 1990. "Bill Traylor" Exhibition Catalogue, O"Kane Gallery, University of Houston, 2001