William Tolliver has become a household name in the art industry and in a relatively short time. This 42 year old native Mississippian has tinkered with art all of his life but has only been at it full time for less than 12 years. His Atlanta Gallery on Peachtree Road has only been open for three years. And even though he sold hundreds of canvas creative to celebrities like Barbara (I dream of Jeannie) Eden, Shari Belafonte, Cicely Tyson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Tolliver is still amazed by it all.

“My work has received a great response and that’s a tremendous blessing. Somebody from my background making a living as an artist is more than a dream come true,” he says. “It’s from God. I give Him all of the praise. You have to share what He’s given you with the world.”

Tolliver was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1951, one of 14 children. His dad often bragged about how well “his boy could draw.” But Tolliver says his father never really thought it would go anywhere.

Many of his childhood friends were also supportive, often telling him his notebook creations would make him rich someday. He was flattered by their confidence but said he wasn’t convinced. “the people who said I was good didn’t know anything about art,” he once told a New Orleans newspaper reporter. “I mean, what do they know?”

Luckily for him, one of those relatives did. His mother loved to draw and often pitted Tolliver against an older sibling in drawing contests. While Tolliver’s older brother grew tired and impatient with artwork, Tolliver says his mother saw his hunger to know more and began exposing him to art books.

The local library became a second home for William, who soon transformed himself into a bookworm. As a teenager, he began studying the classic painters and their styles. Van Gogh and Picasso became strong favorites. “I know my lines resembled Picasso’s but it wasn’t until later that I knew why,” says Tolliver.. “Picasso spent a lot of time in African art museums and developed that style. I got my (African-influenced) style through heritage.”

Tolliver used money from odd jobs to purchase oil pastels and dime store watercolor sets and educated himself about mixing colors through inexpensive paint-by-number sets. “It’s the best teacher I had,” he once said of the system. “Everything is diagrammed, every little spot, every color. Once I did one or two, I got the principle.”

He also got an early education in what would become a budding art career. Self-educated or not, painting pretty pictures didn’t pay bills. Faced with having to earn money to help support his mother and siblings, he quit school at 14, moved to Los Angeles and lied about his age to get into a Job Corps program where he was trained in carpentry. Eighteen of Tolliver’s uncles were also carpenters and/or contractors, so the career choice seemed to fit.

Tolliver hammered and nailed his way over at least half of the country. Though it didn’t seem valuable to him at the time, he now credits his travel experiences as being a storehouse for locations and settings he uses as backdrops for his work.

But at the time, all that was a pipe dream. Painting was little more than a hobby. By 1977, William Tolliver had became a husband, then a father soon after. The demand for more cash forced Tolliver to head east, this time to the oil boom town of Lafayette, Louisiana. Tolliver found plenty of work… for awhile. But by 1983, the Lafayette, Louisiana oil boom had dried up. Soon Tolliver began drawing… unemployment checks.

In desperation, he began selling some art work. “I remember walking into this art gallery with eight of my paintings and they sold.” The gallery was called Live Oak and was owned by Bob Crutchfield, who immediately recognized Tolliver’s immense talent. In an interview with a Louisiana magazine, Crutchfield touted Tolliver at the most versatile artist he had ever worked with saying, “He’s probably the most talented artist we’ve ever dealt with. His sales will show that I’m not wrong.”

Tolliver remembers getting $250.00 for those eight paintings and providing work to Live Oak for three years. But the arrangement made the independent thinking Tolliver uncomfortable. “Galleries want 50 to 60 percent and a lifetime contract for your work.” So he opened his own gallery in Lafayette and kept 100 percent of the asking price for his originals. Now the price he got for eight paintings is considered a steal today for just one print of the artist’s work.

With a growing customer base and the recognition that Lafayette was a hard place for many of his customers to get to, he sought an area that was more accessible. “Atlanta was the ideal place to come and showcase my works,” he said. “It was a pretty good move.”

Before Tolliver could hang a shingle on his new digs in Atlanta, Fulton County breathed life into the first National Black Arts Festival. Those that didn’t know William Tolliver got him in spades via the NBAF.

“Did it help? Sure. It brings people here from all over the world. You can get a lot of exposure through the NBAF.”

Fame can be as costly as it is profitable. Constant demands for interviews tend to eat into available painting time. Tolliver is accustomed to putting in 18 hour days, often painting and creating from dusk ‘til dawn. He’ll keep up that pace for three months, then hibernate for two days (usually in his native Vicksburg) before beginning the process all over again. He says surviving as an African-American in an industry which has begun “discovering” their talents has not been that tough for him. “I can make money doing my art with few problems. Yes, you’ve got clubs and cliques in this business. I’ve done well at this without being a part of any of the cliques. I’d like their support but I don’t really want to be in them anyway. But those doors are hard to break down for black or white artists.”

Fans of Tolliver paintings will tell you the artist and his work are in a class all by themselves. It could be because of his self education or his demands for independence and his penchant for hard work. But scratch deeper and you’ll find that the root of Tolliver’s success lies with one of his most admired artists - Van Gogh. “He painted for the love of art rather than the love of money,” says Tolliver. And Tolliver sees his art as practically meaningless if “it doesn’t move anyone but its’ creator.”