William Gonzalez was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1927 and died in Far Rockaway, NY in 2001. He spent his later years living independently in an apartment near his devoted younger sister. His sister watched over him with fierce protection. Gonzalez first came into contact with mental health services when he was taken to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan while living in Spanish Harlem. It’s not exactly clear what happened, but it may have been a car accident that led to Gonzalez’ hospitalization at a state mental hospital for almost twenty-five years. He began painting when he was well past age 60. His work immediately took on the graphic, skilled quality that we see in all his work. Most of his work is acrylic on relatively large canvases. He chose to write on his paintings, much to the dismay of his sister, but thankfully, he continued to write on them anyway. His writings were the first time that he shared his thoughts and past history of treatment for his mental illness. He used his paintings to put sense, on his terms, to his life tragedies, expressing his idiosyncratic thoughts about his life. For example, ducks are a central theme in his thinking and he said that they relate to homosexual experiences, probably non-consensual, in the hospital. Despite the technical accomplishment of his work, Gonzalez is most assuredly an untrained artist, swearing repeatedly that he had no training and in fact did not begin painting until he joined the HAI program.