Among the youngest of the Highwaymen, Willie Daniels lived with his family next door to Harold Newton and Roy McLendon. Like most artists of the group, he had no formal training, learning only by watching others paint. He was particularly impressed by Newton, saying “Harold was number one. Everyone wanted to be like him. Masterpieces off the top of his head.” With a strong sense of form and composition and idiosyncratic style, Daniels’s paintings epitomize the ideal Highwaymen aesthetic.

More often than the others, Daniels employed Al Black to sell his paintings. He would make ten to twelve paintings a night, often leaving them all unsigned. Daniels would leave more paintings unsigned than would the other artists, for Black to sell. Hence, many paintings signed “A. Black” are Willie Daniels’s work. This practice did not offend the painters. Instead, they were grateful for the increased sales. Theirs was a consumer-driven enterprise and never one based on credits or conceits of authorship.