Internationally acclaimed self-taught artist Bill Traylor was a native of Lowndes County who began drawing and painting in Montgomery in the 1930s. His paintings contain imagery of animals and human figures from his life in Alabama, as well as more imaginative creatures. Traylor soon became associated with Charles Shannon of the New South artist’s collective, whose showings of Traylor’s art in the 1970s and 1980s popularized the artist’s work decades after his death in 1949.