It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw

There’s something especially intriguing about picture books that focus on an artist. Picture books ought to be intensely visual, rewarding in both word and image – and when the illustrator is given the expanded license to explore not just the experiential world, but the creative world of another artist, well, magical things can happen. Think of Linnea in Monet’s Garden, for example.

So it is with IT JES’ HAPPENED, a biography of folk artist Bill Traylor, an ex-slave living in Alabama who one day just started drawing – at the age of 85. Don Tate creates a beautiful narrative of a man who held within himself all the pictures and images of a long, full life, and you get the sense that one day, the pictures just spilled over. And Bill Traylor started drawing, with whatever and on whatever came to hand. Illustrator R. Gregory Christie alludes to both the energy and simplicity of Bill Traylor's art in his marvelously vibrant, purposefully 2D illustrations. I especially love Bill Traylor's beard as painted by Christie, the incredible cotton-ball fullness, and the thin, angular limbs, so full of motion and purpose.

This simple – and simply beautiful book – explores Bill Traylor’s life and art, which is reason enough to read it. However, it strikes me it does something else important. It points out that the simple things an ordinary person (or child) observes in the course of an ordinary day are still the stuff of art. That art need not be created in the classroom or in Rome or somewhere with an ocean view. Art can be created right this minute, right here, with whatever you have to hand. You just have to let it happen.