Traylor, Bill

Traylor, Bill (1854–1947) folk artist, plantation worker; born in Alabama. Born a slave, he worked on a plantation near Selma, Ala., until his early eighties; he then moved to Montgomery, Ala. He had begun drawing the world around him in a bold, primitive, but often strikingly original way. In the last two decades of his life he produced over 1,000 works, but it was not until the 1980s that he was discovered; his work has been exhibited around the world and he is the subject of a biography (1992).