Born a slave on the plantation of George Traylor near Benton, Alabama, Bill Traylor became known as a folk artist who did stark and simple drawings with colored pencils in a flat, child-like style. His images are of plantation and street life, domestic animals and people going about their lives in the segregated South before and after the Civil War.

After the Civil War, he took the name of the plantation owner and chose to remain on the plantation, living there until he was eighty-four years old. It is likely he had no formal education. He worked as a field hand, and married Lourisa Duncan with whom he had nine children. (He fathered another eleven children while on the Plantation). ...