Arthur J. Williams Jr. served six and a half years in federal prison for counterfeiting about $10 million dollars. He is infamous for having replicated the 1996 hundred dollar bill, which was said to be impossible to replicate.
While in prison Arthur said to have read about 60 biographies ranging from leaders to inventors and even painters. When he came across the biographical novel of Michelangelo written by Irving Stone, he instantly fell in love with the renaissance period.
“After reading that book I wanted to learn everything about that time period. So I took an art class in jail and during the first class they gave us a flower to paint. I ended up quitting. I didn’t wanna paint no flowers in prison.”
Soon enough he began to find an escape through painting on canvases.
“It was my world nothing else [mattered] not the fence, not the guards, not the bullshit that went on inside prison. Just me and the canvas it was a freedom that I found and fell in love with.”
After being released from prison he was tempted to fall right back into the life of crime. Two years after being released he borrowed money to begin counterfeiting once again.
His son [who had previously dwelled in the same wrong doings] caught him in the act of counterfeiting and was ashamed by it. This opened Arthur’s eyes, and after a talk with his son he decided to once and for all leave crime behind.
Arthur was feeling at an all time low, but within blank canvases he found an escape just like he did in prison.
“I kept on painting just to keep my sanity. After prison there’s nothing for felons it's hard to get a job. I went from being the world's number one counterfeiter to now cleaning toilets seven years later. Talk about a humbling experience.”
Arthur’s life after crime consisted of working during the day and creating art at night. In 2014 an opportunity presented itself when former owner of Lacuna Lofts, Joseph Cacciatore, took him under his wing. He began to work there aiding artists and running errands for them. This instantly changed his life, as he was finally making a decent living off honest work.
After working at Lacuna Lofts he began to paint houses for the next couple of years. In June 2017 he lost his house to a fire and out of the ashes the only thing that survived was a painting of his brother.
“It’s different now. This painting got like six paintings underneath it. This painting will be with me for the rest of my life. This was one of the first canvases I got when I got out of prison.”
Arthur had lost his brother and seeing that painting laying there in the ashes he felt as if it was a message; telling him that he was doing the wrong thing by painting houses. His brother always encouraged him to be an artist but Arthur would say, “there’s a million artist out there. It’s like trying to be in the NFL.”
“After that I painted this over it. It's kinda like a Phoenix. It was like I rose out of the fire and now I’m about to paint over it again. By the time I go this might have 30 paintings over it.”
Arthur then decided to pursue artistry full time and went down to Art Basel in Miami. He took four paintings and “smoked the game.” There he met Arnold Schwarzenegger and his team who found Arthur’s paintings visually satisfying because of his style.
In 2019 he was invited out to California. In only three hours Arthur made about half a million dollars from selling his paintings.
“I gave Arnold $180,000 for his charity and came back and got my gallery.”
Arthur plans to open up Da Vinci Gallery to the public in the Southside of Chicago in the near future.