Gleeson was born into an Irish Catholic family in Lodi, California in 1961. At 18, dismayed with the educational system, he began full-time work as a shipper in the local pork-processing plant.

At age 19, even more dismayed with the pork processing system, after nearly a year of loading pork products onto trucks and packing slabs of raw back-fat into boxes, he decided that higher education might not be such a bad thing, and set off for the Psychology Department at Chico State University — a school reputed by Playboy magazine to be the No. 1 party school in America for ten years running. It was here that Bill first dabbled in art, having had the good fortune of becoming acquainted with a student from the Art Department.

After leaving school with a degree in Psychology which qualified him for work in a pork-processing plant, he bought a ticket for Japan in 1985 where he found work as an English teacher, fake Christian wedding minister, Santa Claus, and unsuccessful banana smuggler.

During this time he continued painting with oils and learning Japanese traditional ceramic techniques, studying Zen and Aikido, and finally figuring out that sometimes no really does mean yes.

After about ten years of peripatetic existence in Japan and several other Asian countries including Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Nepal, Korea, Thailand, China, Malaysia and Indonesia, Bill returned to California where he pursued studies in Clinical Hypnotherapy at the Institute for Advanced Hypnosis under Eli Jaxon-Bear and Toni Varner. More recently, he has received a teaching credential and taught fifth grade for the past three years at a public school in Stockton, California.

When he paints, Bill uses his training in hypnosis and meditation as a means of allowing images to emerge that are not ordinarily accessible in ordinary states of consciousness.

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