K. C. Bacon was raised in a Navy family, born in Aiea Ewa, Hawaii, and living in Florida, England, Rhode Island, Virginia, California, and Oregon. His favorite childhood books were the 1954 edition of World Book Encyclopedia and a collection of New Yorker cartoons.

After high school, he spent three years in the U.S. Navy, mostly at an ammunition depot in the Philippine Islands. He attended Oregon State University on the GI Bill, majoring in Religious Studies, graduating in 1974.

In 1975-76 he attended Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

Combining his art with a career as a stevedore, he is primarily self-taught, with the exception of coursework at the Seattle Academy of Realist Art in the 1990s.  

He has shown his work at several venues in the Pacific Northwest while maintaining a gallery at his Tacoma home since 2003.

As a writer, the artist has published two volumes of poetry, two chapbooks of aphorisms, the novella, Moon Over New Rotterdam, the comic novel, Thanks, Joaquin, and his most recent publication, New Rotterdam Quartet, a collections of stories regarding life in his fictional town, New Rotterdam.