Sam Gilliam’s works on paper play an important role in his style development.  Before Gilliam physically manipulated his canvases, he first crumpled, folded, and submerged paper.  According to Jonathan Binstock’s 2005 monograph, Gilliam first started working in watercolor while in graduate school at the University of Louisville.  His professor thought Gilliam treated his paintings with too much respect, as though the raw materials were precious, and recommended the medium to help Gilliam loosen up.  Gilliam's first exhibition at Adams Morgan Gallery in 1963 included watercolors.  Fellow DC artist Thomas Downing singled out one abstract watercolor and told Gilliam that should be his direction.  Gilliam then moved into abstraction, first hard edged like Downing, and then in 1966 he found his own style with the "Slice" paintings.  His first “Slice” work was a watercolor called Green Slice, 1966.  Gilliam exhibited 8 paintings and 4 watercolors on rice paper in his solo exhibition at the Phillips Collection in DC in 1967.