In 1970 William L. Buggel was called "one of South Carolina's youngest talents." 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. Buggel is a Columbia, SC native included in the "contemporary artists of South Carolina" Tricentennial survey of the arts in this state.