In 1970 William L. Buggel was called "one of South Carolina's youngest talents" and was  included in the "contemporary artists of South Carolina" Tricentennial survey of the arts in this state. 

He has continued to be a beacon of abstraction in a land where either an artist paints at least somewhat realistically or moves from realism to abstraction.  Buggel did neither.  He began in abstraction creating a sense of a language of his own and he continues in abstraction.

Born and raised in Columbia, SC, Bill Buggel studied at the University of South Carolina, graduating in 1967. At USC, he studied under Ed Yaghjian, Augusta Wittkowsky, Catherine Rembert, Boyd Saunders and John O'Neil. J. Bardin also contributed to his art education. Since college, he has incorporated the red clay of South Carolina into his work. He moved to Charleston to be the Assistant Director of the Gibbes Museum of Art, the medium often changed to the gray of the pluff mud.

As one of the foremost abstract expressionist painters in the state, he has been interpreting the landscape, using techniques like flashes of color running together like a strip of film. Seeing static forms from a moving platform form the basis for many of his paintings.