A key figure in the tradition of 20th centuryAfrican American folk art, Bill Traylor is perhapsthe most well-known of the ‘outsider’ or‘self-taught’ artists. Born into slavery, Traylorworked as a sharecropper until late in lifewhen he moved to Montgomery, Alabama, andbegan drawing on found pieces of cardboardand the backs of advertisements. A visualstoryteller whose drawings have been likenedto evocative interpreters of the South such asWilliam Faulkner and Robert Johnson, Traylor’siconic images of people and animals reflecthis powers of imagination as well as his closeobservations of the world around him. Since1982, when his drawings were reintroducedto modern audiences through the exhibition‘Black Folk Art in America, 1930 – 1980,’ heldat the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington,D.C., critics have speculated about the social,cultural, and political implications of his art,as well as its parallels with blues music.What is always agreed upon, however, ishis work’s universal appeal stemming fromthe artist’s sincerity, humor, and remarkablysophisticated formalism.
