He was a painter, illustrator, muralist, and art instructor active in New York City.
He was a grandson of John Shaw Billings, a surgeon and the first director of the New York Public Library.
In 1936–37, he created a series of five murals depicting winter sports for the Lake Placid, New York post office.
[5] He also contributed murals to post offices in Medford, Massachusetts, Wappinger Falls, New York, and Columbia, Tennessee, and a striking mural of a panther which still hangs near the ladies' powder room in Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center.
[1][6] In 1945, Billings created a series of paintings for Life magazine depicting "strafing targets as they appear to the fighter pilot through the transparent rectangle of his reflector gunsight.