A Celebration of Bill Traylor’s Art

Bill Traylor, born into slavery created more than 1,200 folk drawings after he was 70 years old. Traylor was born in the 1850s and worked as a field hand for more than 50 years. In his mid 70s, when too old for field work, he moved to Montgomery, where he began his creative painting. His art was simple drawings from his memories of plantation life and scenes from Montgomery’s six block African American community known as Dark Town.  Traylor’s drawings were of farm animals that conveys their individuality. He gave each one personality with his acute memory. Even though they are in flat silhouette his power was in the playful way he placed them in negative space to achieve movement.

   Some of his most complex compositions places small characters bounding around forms that can be recognized as the Alabama capitol, and even a swimming platform from the plantation where he was a slave.  He drew couples with flashing fingers and animated body language. He is presumed to have known something about conflict with the opposite sex. He had two wives and some 20 children. Bill Traylor died in 1949 long before his art was discovered. A young Alabama artist, Charles Shannon bought many of Traylor’s paintings for safe keeping. He worked to get Traylor’s work recognized in New York before World War 11, but was unsuccessful.

   Charles Shannon did see Bill Traylor’s work exhibited at the  Metropolitan  Museum of Art in 1995, one year before his death. The decade after Traylor relocated to Montgomery was one of magnificent creativity. Shannon supplied him with paint and art supplies and encouraged Traylor in his art. In 1982 his work was included in the “Black Folk Art in America” exhibit in Washington’s Corcoran Gallery. The same year, Atlanta’s High Museum and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts acquired collections of 30 Traylor drawings. That secured the legacy of this prolific folk artist. His work is now known and celebrated throughout the states.  Traylor’s drawings sell for $40,000 to 225,000 and are exhibited in at least 30 solo exhibitions and 85 group shows.

  The largest exhibit of Traylor’s work has just opened in Atlanta at the High Museum with an exhibit of 65 of his pieces. It will remain on view through May 13, and will continue a national tour with stops in Nashville and San Diego.