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 In the ten years since he first came to the attention of the art establishment until his untimely death at age 49, William Tolliver
rose to meteoric heights as an artist and art entrepreneur. Tolliver was widely considered something of a prodigy. He had no formal training, but seemed to have come into the world with a natural
artistic genius, the ability to recall the past almost in photographic details, an a discipline and determination to master his craft. His informal training started at an early age in his native Vicksburg,
Mississippi. The second child in a family of fourteen children, his mother worked in the cottonfields by day and found the energy in her spare time to rear, educate, and entertain her children. She
held drawing contests at home between herself, Tolliver, and his older brother as a way of motivating them. His brother eventually lost interest, but Tolliver’s enthusiasm only
grew. He would soon be devouring books on art from the library, studying the works of the great European masters and copying many of the elaborate works he saw in the books.
Tolliver left Mississippi when he was fourteen for Los Angeles where he joined the Job Corps. He continued his
informal study of art and found a mentor at the trade school where he was studying. Tolliver got help with his technique and learned to mix and blend colors. After moving around a bit, he returned to Mississippi where he
worked as a carpenter, painting mostly at nights and weekends.
He moved to Lafayette, Louisianna in 1977 after getting married. He worked as a house painter and when he lost
his job, started to sell his paintings. After a local gallery started carrying his work, public demand for his work grew so much that he could now paint full time. In 1991 he moved to Atlanta, Georgia and opened his own gallery
in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood. The artistic and commercial success he enjoyed was unprecedented for a self taught artist and one so relatively young. Tolliver exhibited throughout the US including the rotunda of the
United States Senate Building. His work can be found in public collections such as the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C., the New Orleans Museum of Art and Hampton University Museum in Hampton, Va. His work is
also in numerous private collections in the U.S. and places as far away as Japan. He has been featured in major art publications, including the International Review of African American Art and The Art Gallery International.
Tolliver is a versatile artist who handles figure studies, portraits, human interest situations, landscapes, and semi
-abstracts equally well and is generally considered to be a master of color, harmony and design.
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