Gerald Stinski was born and raised in the Lake Winnebago region of Wisconsin. He attended parochial schools there, then attended Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Watertown, Wisconsin. Upon completion, he then entered St. Camillus Monastery for a study period of five years. the U.S. Navy and was stationed at NATO headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia for four years. After leaving the Navy, he assumed a designing position in Atlanta, Georgia and later accepted a designing position in San Francisco, California. Stinski became a self-supporting, self-taught artist in San Francisco in 1961.