William Kelly OAM (b. 1943) was born in Buffalo, New York and was a steelworker before becoming a student at the Philadelphia College of Art. After graduating in 1968 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, moved to Melbourne for further study at the National Gallery School, and was appointed Dean of the School of Art at the Victorian College of the Arts.
The only artist to be awarded an Australian Violence Prevention Award, Kelly is recognised as a humanist, social activist and pacifist and represented Australia in the International United Nations Declaration of Human Rights Print Portfolio. He has held a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria, and has been visiting artist and lecturer at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the New York Studio School, and Yale University. Kelly has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally, and is represented in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, State Library of New South Wales, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Victorian Arts Centre, United Nations, Geneva, Guernica Peace Museum, Spain, and Durban Art Gallery, South Africa.