William Blacklock was born in Waltham Massachusetts in 1933. He received a full scholarship in painting at School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1951-1953 and studied painting there with Karl Zerbe and David Aronson. He studied painting privately with Jason Berger, in 1953 and 1954.
Blacklock's work has been exhibited in Provincetown Annual in 1954 and was shown in many group exhibitions in New York City from 1956-1959. His first one-man show was at the Fleischmann Gallery and a painting from that show was reproduced in Art News Magazine in January 1960. He traveled and painted extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Labrador during the sixties and traveled to France, Italy, and England, living and painting in Florence in 1966 and internationally throughout the seventies and eighties.
Blacklock was active as a jazz pianist with leading jazz figures. From 1991 to 1995 he has been painting, writing fiction, essays, poetry, playing piano, trombone, exhibiting painting, reading, participating in seminars, teaching, concerts, at Westbeth in New York City.