Bill Hutson was born in San Marcos, Texas in 1936. His mother was a custodian, and his father, who died when Hutson was four, was a musician who played in churches and clubs. Despite the lack of artistic influence which characterized his childhood years, an early interest in the craft was undeniable. Hutson's first foray into the world of art occurred when he was a teenager, when he responded to an advertisement in the newspaper: a picture, along with the instructions, 'Draw Me.' He won a prize in the competition, and entry into an art correspondence course. The experience led him to submit a cartoon to the San Marcos Daily Paper, which saw publication.

Ten years after the death of his father, Hutson's mother passed away. He was moved, along with his siblings, to live with relatives in San Antonio. Hutson studied at the San Marcos Colored High School until 1952, finishing his high school diploma at the Phyllis Wheatley High School in San Antonio in 1956. Alongside his public education, Hutson studied drawing, design, and color theory from 1951-1955 with the assistance of Art Instruction Inc., a correspondence school. After graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, where he became a sergeant working with airborne radar systems. While in the Air Force, Hutson enrolled in a drawing course at the University of New Mexico, continuing with the artistic explorations of his youth.

Following an honorable discharge, Hutson moved to Los Angeles, where his brother and uncle were living. He sought to apply for a job at a company that made airborne radar systems, the same ones he had worked with during his years in the air force. Though his qualifications for the position were undeniable, the color of his skin denied him the ability to work. Instead, he found work as a file clerk at Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company. The company hosted an expansive collection of African and African American visual arts, which served as Hutson’s first exposure to fine art. Shortly after, he moved to San Francisco.

In San Francisco, Hutson embraced his artistic interests, making both figurative and abstract paintings. He had very little formal training, though between 1960 and 1961 he briefly studied commercial art at the San Francisco Academy of Art. From 1960 to 1962, he was an assistant to Frank N. Ashley, a realist painter who had studied and assisted under Reginald March at the Art Students League in New York. The apprenticeship  introduced Hutson to the art of Sargent Claude Johnson, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, Deborah Remington, and others. At this time, he also exhibited  his works in the John Bolles Gallery, Fred Maxwell Gallery, and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Life in San Francisco also led Hutson to spend time at the legendary City Lights Bookstore, where Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped introduce him to European writers and artists. He read and met many of the generation’s Beat writers and interacted with the Black Panthers. Hutson often allowed Black students from Berkeley to gather at his studio on 17th Street.

In 1962, Hutson left San Francisco and made his way to London for a brief stint, followed by extended stays in Amsterdam and Paris. In his time traveling, he began to move in a circle of fellow abstract expressionist painters. Drawn to the implicit rather than the explicit, Hutson was never an artist to shout aloud political messages. However, the titles of his works reveal his ongoing, consistent engagement with the ugliness and upheaval that marked life for an African-American man in the US in the 60s.