Bill Toma has been involved in art since childhood. An avid sketch artist throughout his school years, he continued his interest in art through oil painting while obtaining a Master of Arts degree in English in 1961. While pursuing a teaching career, he began sculpting and working in metal. By 1973, he had become so obsessed with his art that he resigned from his career as an English instructor at Long Beach City College to pursue his passion full-time. Since that turning point, Bill Toma became an internationally known and highly collectible artist.  

Bill Toma’s degree has greatly influenced his art and has always worked in different genres. However, his most recent muse is fantasy art. His display of dragons, for example, instills a sense of wonder in the viewer of worlds that might be where vastly intelligent creatures travel above us on leather wings, or hording treasure in their cavernous lairs.  

Regarding fantasy art, Bill Toma states, “My fascination with fantasy art results from the complete imaginative freedom it offers. It allows us to travel to realms beyond, to realms of an alternative reality where anything is possible, to realms that offer the substance of our dreams, to realms that fire the imagination.”  

His works are so expertly detailed that Bill Toma has been under exclusive contract with Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and The Walt Disney Company, producing their limited-edition characters since the 1980s.  

Bill Toma’s studio speaks clearly about his varied artistic interests. With an oil painting of the late Bunker Hill’s Victorian Homes, whimsical motorized sculptures with as many as 200 cast parts, sensual nudes, fierce dragons in their original clay forms that somehow survived the molding process, an aging clay torso of a Harlequin, the head of a grizzly bear used as a study, a robotic frog catching a robotic dragonfly, and scattered about the entire studio, a host of Disney characters.  

When asked about his work, Bill Toma stated that he greatly enjoys having his work speak symbolically to its viewers, a carryover from his literary background. Symbolism is profound, which is the case with his piece, “Gift of Love” depicting a lovely nude sitting atop a pedestal offering a blossoming red rose. The rose is an object of beauty, delicacy, and fragrance; yet it possesses thorns. The opening of the rose is representative of having to open ourselves to experience love, thereby becoming vulnerable. The thorns are symbolic of the possibility of being hurt while in love. Though the jester’s gloves are an attempt to avoid the pain of love, once enamored, anyone can be made the fool. Such is the work of Bill Toma, one of the most innovative and popular sculptors in the world today.  

Bill Toma’s work captures a flight of fancy, and freezes the imagination’s most soaring dream, and brings it to terra firma for our pleasure and admiration. HIs body of work spans a wide range of subjects, from wildlife and nudes to Renaissance Harlequins and fantasy art. Toma’s creations invite viewers into realms of imagination and fantasy, transforming soaring dreams into tangible art. With each piece, he offers a glimpse into an alternate reality where anything is possible, capturing the essence of the imagination and bringing it to life for all to admire.