Untitled (Man in a Blue House)

When asked to describe one of his drawings, Bill Traylor simply responded, “That’s an exciting event.” This untitled blue house depicts one of these “exciting events” in his characteristic flat, geometric forms and skewed perspective. Born as an enslaved person on an Alabama plantation, Traylor remained on the farm as a sharecropper until he left his agrarian background for urban Montgomery in his 80s. Sometime upon his arrival, Traylor picked up a pencil and brush and began to draw his experiences and observations, lending his work an autobiographical tone.