His work was influenced by his childhood on the prairies, his Ukrainian-Canadian roots, his struggles with mental illness, and his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

When about to enter high school, their father announced that they would do so in Winnipeg, where he purchased a house on Burrows Ave., seeing this as the economically wiser course than throwing money away on rent.

Here, he studied the great contemporary Mexican artists: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco.

[15] Kurelek's friends at the OCA told him about a School of Fine Arts in San Miguel, Mexico, which might grant him a scholarship if he produced something worthwhile.

Zaporozhian Cossacks, a gift to his father, is the last painting Kurelek did before leaving for Europe for the first time, and shows the influence of the Mexican muralists on his work.

[21] Margaret Smith brought him a book of poems, wrapped in a dust jacket that she had made of a Catholic newspaper.

[23] He took a correspondence course from the church, and met with Father Edward Holloway,[24] a theologian trained at the English College in Rome, who helped him over some final stumbling blocks.

[26] He was transferred from the Maudsley to the Netherne Hospital, where he stayed from November 1953 to January 1955, to work with Edward Adamson (1911–1996), a pioneer of art therapy.

[27] (donated to the American Visionary Arts Museum by Adamson at its inauguration in 1995), I Spit On Life,[28] and A Ball of Twine and Other Nonsense.

Pollak's became another school for Kurelek, where he learned the closely guarded secrets of gilding, which eventually found their way into his techniques as a painter.

In later years, Avrom Isaacs commented that Kurelek would take more time building a frame than actually painting its canvas.

[31][32] Glimmering Tapers round the Day's Dead Sanctities from 1970 is part of his Nature, Poor Stepdame series, and indicates that he was still building frames for his own paintings though quite renowned as an artist by this time.

Canadian poet John Robert Colombo, for whom Kurelek had recently illustrated his first book of poetry, best describes the opening: "There were a lot of strange looking people, not the usual art crowd.

"[38] The Isaacs' popular opening nights drew city sophisticates, affecting the bohemian dress of their day.

[41] When the ladies committee telephoned Kurelek to come to the AGO to meet with Barr, he did not even know that Av Isaacs had entered one of his paintings into the competition.

Jean was a nurse, Anglo-Canadian, and part of Our Lady of the Wayside Praesidium at the centre, "it was devoted to rehabilitating prostitutes and dope addicts - a rather brave kind of Christian charity work that I admired.

[51][52] About Dinnertime on the Prairies, Paul Duval wrote, "I cannot recall any Canadian religious painting to equal it for sheer dramatic impact.

"[55] In 1964, on a trip back to Stonewall and the bog, Kurelek's diary records him still struggling with how to fuse his religious message with his nature paintings.

"[56] Kurelek took this criticism to heart and in the didactic shows following, made his paintings subtler and borrowed long poetic titles for them, i.e. from the poet Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven" for his Nature, Poor Stepdame series.

They were planning to open an Art Gallery in Niagara Falls[65] and wanted to purchase the entire series.

People unable to buy one traveled to Toronto, where the other ten were sold just as quickly the following week at the Isaacs' Gallery.

[76] Kurelek also did a series of 20 paintings depicting the Nativity as if Christ had been born in various Canadian settings: an igloo, a trapper's cabin, a boxcar, a motel.

He maintained a cottage near Combermere, Ontario, where he got his inspiration for a book of paintings entitled The Polish Canadians,[77] and was a friend of the nearby Madonna House Apostolate.

First taking the Orient Express, again behind the Iron Curtain, through Yugoslavia and Turkey, he had himself smuggled into the Holy Land on an American grain cargo boat from İskenderun to Beirut.

In 1975, while on a pilgrimage to Lourdes again, he completed 73 illustrations for Bohdan Melnyk's translation of Ivan Franko's Fox Mykyta.

Initially, he knew nothing about Franko, but when suggested that the Ukrainian classic should be part of mainstream culture, went ahead with the project.

"[86] Having finished the illustrations, Kurelek read the book more closely and voiced the concern that Franko's fox was using clerical disguises for selfish ends.

"If she wished to use his work to illustrate her fiction, she would have to change the text, turning the abortion into a miscarriage performed by an unqualified midwife."

Having trouble with heights, his assistant Geralyn Jansen climbed to the apex and painted God into the mural in the aniconic image of the sun.

In 1981, the hard rock band Van Halen released their fourth album titled "Fair Warning", with a cover that features several closeup details of William Kurelek's painting "The Maze" from 1953.