William Peyton Brower was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1936 into a military family, both his stepfather and uncle were graduates of West Point. From 1945 to 1949, young William accompanied his family to occupation duty in post war West Germany.

The devastation, consequent poverty and desperation, masses of refugees and a child's view of how the Nazis had used massed heroic art, shiny uniforms, and mass propaganda, coupled with brutal punishments to transform a nation into willing accomplices, from 1933 to 1945, made a lasting impression on William, as did the reconstruction of West Germany observed by him.

William Brower entered West Point in 1954, and was noted as a wrestler and a keen visual artist which eventually led him to become the art editor of the campus magazine, "The Pointer". His satirical cartoons were very popular with the cadets, if not also with members of the faculty.

He graduated in 1958 and was assigned to infantry, became a paratrooper and served in West Germany. He was medically discharged in 1960. He then turned to art full time, attending the prestigious Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC. He founded and operated a lucrative commercial art business in the '60s and '70s.

He has primarily expressed himself through drawing and painting as his two main artistic media although he had also experimented with sculpture and wood carving. He has three grown chilcren and lives in a wooded, rural area of West Virginia.