"He is a phenomenon. 'A striking example of idiosyncratic and isolate genius' (Kay Larson in New York magazine), the earliest black folk artist to receive substantial recognition, and the only self-taught painter whose work is now regarded as important contemporary art both in this country and abroad. Bill Traylor was a freed slave who, in 1939, at age eighty-five, began to draw. (He had remained on the Alabama plantation from 1854 until 1939 to farm and to raise twenty-two children.) First working in a show factory until disabled by rheumatism, and then homeless, in Montgomery, Traylor slept in the back of a funeral parlor, where the caskets were stacked, and made the sidewalk his studio, drawing on pieces of cardboard propped in his lap, using the stub of a pencil, poster paints, and a little straight-edge stick (he had no brushes). In three years, he created more that 1,500 silhouette-like drawings of plants, animals, people, and abstract forms. In 1979, thirty years after Traylor's death, his paintings were first exhibited and, in the decade since, his work has been featured in more than forty major exhibitions around the world. Now, 148 of these exceptional paintings are brought together for the first time. Here are joyous figures dancing on rooftops, top-hatted men reeling around ornate liquor stills, a giant of a man walking a dog up the back of his leg, a six-legged bull with crescent horns and a pendulum tail. By turns sophisticated and naive, whimsical and sinister, the paintings give us a stunning vision of Bill Traylor's unique genius. Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, who are among the most admired authorities on American primitive art, selected these drawings and paintings from the larger body of Traylor's work; they have coauthored the preface, and conducted the interview with Charles Shannon, the Montgomery artist who discovered, assembled, and preserved Bill Traylor's work." -- Jacket
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