Willie White was born in Natchez, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers. Having uprooted himself from the cotton farm, he settled in New Orleans, working as a waiter, barber, nightclub janitor on Canal Street and occasional sign painter. In the 1960s White began decorating his front porch on Dryades Street with his drawings, mostly created with magic markers on poster board, a medium which he began to work exclusively in after the late 1960s. His subjects became fantastic prehistoric birds, alligators, dragons and flying horses, and abstract aerial landscapes. White was "inspired by God and movies of faraway places" seen on his black and white television. White's brightly colored marker drawings depict various subjects including religious images and houses.