Accidental Mysteries: 07.15.12

I was looking at a book about Traylor the other night and saw it all differently, perhaps because I've been reading so much about the lives of slaves. I noticed that he said you can distinguish the black from white people by drawing a straight line from the tip of the nose to the chin. If the lips meet the line, it's a black man. That was my new way in. Now I see that the pictures are largely about terrorism. Black people are being chased, trodden, threatened, hounded. The dogs, especially, have terrible sharp teeth and a howling stance, like the dogs used to run down fugitives and tear out their throats. God rest his tortured soul. At 84, in the early 30s, he left the plantation after the death of his employer/erstwhile massa, and went to Montgomery, AL, where he got a job in a shoe factory. Who hires an 84 year old man for factory work? Got rest his tortured soul. He transmuted horror into beauty. We should look hard at these pictures and all follow his lead.

Bill Traylor's figures often seem as though they've wandered from the walls of forgotten caves, reappearing to whisper to those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear. I found Traylor while in art school, eventually designing a poster in celebration of his life, and came across this wonderful quote by Peter Morrin in the book Deep Blues: "Traylor rhymed negative spaces like Matisse." Indeed, his ability to communicate through delicately balanced figure and ground relationships, and with such haunting, soulful forms is extraordinary. There is much for a designer and artist to learn here... and it is clearly a good thing to spend time with chickens, rabbits, and turtles.