Bill Traylor was an American painter and one of the most celebrated Outsider artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. With his unique figurative style, Traylor depicted a lost era of the rural agrarian Southern United States and African-American life. He was born into slavery and developed outside of any artistic training, with the exception of the encouragement of a young artist named Charles Shannon, who provided Traylor with materials. Traylor’s works use a pictograph-like lexicon of symbols to tell open-ended stories replete with animals, plants, and people that are prized today for their innovative aesthetic form and documentation of oppression in the Deep South. Born in April of 1853 in Benton, AL, Traylor spent most of his life ...