William Tolliver's motifs of the land, of simple people at work, or at leisure are but a framework through which he conveys his real subject, which is his joy in working with color, shapes, textures, line and light. As we view how he manipulates these elements, we are caught up in his emotion of joy and become dazzled with the visual delight before us. His works have always evoked a feeling of pleasure and amazement from his audience, be it a first-time viewer or one well acquainted with his art.

The Zigler Collection of his work seeks to demonstrate the progression of Tolliver's art from his earliest landscapes to his latest figurative semi-abstract work, thereby documenting the development of several styles of techniques using a variety of media.

This documentation was facilitated by his rapid growth in a short period of time and his large body of work. This time period of only 3 1/2 years during which he produced over 850 works made it possible to find and purchase twenty-seven examples of many of the stages and plateaus in Tolliver's artistic life.

The early landscapes (circa 1983) were of rural Mississippi, Tolliver's boyhood home. These early paintings appeared to be of uninhabited areas. However, it was not long before small figures were injected to aid in scale and to add life to the countryside. But landscape was still the dominant element and the figures very insignificant. With the figures, however, came civilization in the form of dirt roads, paths, and work fields.

Soon Tolliver started giving us close up views of his people, their work , their social interaction, and leisure time pursuits. These people were always busy, walking, working, or pursuing a hobby. Particular attention was paid to their hands. The importance of manual labor, or rather work that the hands could do, was emphasized by enlarging them and using them as design elements in themselves. The enlargement of the hands, then the torso, and finally the heads filled his canvases until Tolliver's people became monuments to celebrate the dignity of honest labor and to celebrate life itself.

Tolliver's first paintings were in the traditional manner. The story was landscape and it was very complete. Even in the early paintings, however, he manipulated color to evoke a mood, a time of day or a season. His experimentation at this time was with paint application, small brush, big brush, and palette knife.

Because of his excitement while working with color, and the need to find other methods to express the idea he wished to portray, Tolliver began experimenting with a variety of media and techniques. Oil, acrylic, watercolor, oil pastel, soft pastel, pencil, woodcuts, sculptures, collage, 3-dimensional relief's, and multi-media approaches were all explored. During this period the quality of his works remained high and, in fact continually improved.