Bill Traylor

c.1853-1949 · Montgomery, Alabama, USA

Born into slavery, he began drawing at about 85 on a Montgomery street corner, and in roughly three years produced over a thousand images that changed American art.

The life

Traylor was born enslaved on an Alabama plantation around 1853 and farmed that same land for decades after Emancipation. Around 1939, old and alone in segregated Montgomery, he sat on Monroe Street with a straight-edge and pencil stubs and began to draw on shirt cardboard, sleeping in the back room of a funeral parlour. A young white artist, Charles Shannon, bought supplies and preserved the work. The Smithsonian’s 2018 retrospective Between Worlds crowned him one of America’s essential artists.

The work

Flat, silhouetted figures of startling modern economy: preening dogs, top-hatted drinkers, chase scenes around his Exciting Events constructions, mules, snakes and baskets, all memory and observation compressed to shape. He drew what eighty five years had shown him and invented a visual language to hold it.

Why we love them

Nobody in this guide makes the case harder: talent waits, and when it finally gets a pencil and a street corner, three years is enough.

Go deeper

• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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