William Joseph Patterson, painter, printmaker and teacher, was born in Albany, New York on 16 March 1941. He studied at the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, earning his BFA in 1965; the American Academy in Rome on an Abbey Foundation Fellowship between 1965 and 1967; and at Syracuse University where he earned his MFA in 1969. He taught printmaking at the Hartford Art School between 1969 and 1971, and then became associate professor of printmaking and drawing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Patterson is a member of the Boston Printmakers and his work is represented in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; the Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; and the Georgetown University Library Art Collection, Washington, D.C.