Outsider Art: Bill Traylor

Bill Traylor is one of the most celebrated outsider artists, whose unselfconscious and expressive drawings were all done during his eighties, over a span of 5 years. He was discovered by artist Charles Shannon in Montgomery, Alabama in 1939, drawing with a pencil stub and straight-edged stick on discarded shirt cardboard. The 1982 exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art entitled “Black Folk Art in America” brought Traylor to national attention as a major artist and visual storyteller. Just Folk recently acquired a collection of works by Bill Traylor that has not been seen in the United States for over a decade. The acquisition is believed to be one of the largest groups of Traylor works available, and contains 28 pieces, many of which are featured in the “Bill Traylor High Singing Blue” catalogue which accompanied the 1997 exhibit of the same name at Hirschl and Adler Modern in New York and Carl Hammer Gallery. Several pieces are also featured in “Bill Traylor: His Art, His Life” by Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, Knopf, 1991.