Biography

 

     John Valere Muylle was born in 1982 in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Growing up he spent much of his time either drawing or learning to play music.  By the time he graduated from high school, he had already began to form his own visual vocabulary in his art classes and through his endless doodles in his school notebooks.  Muylle then studied art at Ball State University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus on painting and sculpture.  While in school, John grew a great appreciation and admiration for a number of influential artists including Andy Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso, Keith Hering, and especially Roy Lichtenstein.  After college, he focused most of his creativity on playing in bands and painting large abstract images with flat colors and hard edges inspired by microscopic cell structures.  This is where he trained his hand to make precise crisp lines, and also where he developed his skill to create interesting organic and decorative patterns which later became the cornerstone of his unique ink portraiture.

 

     In the summer of 2013, John was engaged to Lori Lemasters, an old college friend and fellow art student.  Later that year, they moved from Indianapolis to Chicago for a change of scenery.  As a result of limited studio space, John redirected his attention from painting to drawing.  His first portrait in his current style was a side profile of himself using black ink pen on thick water color paper.  This started John on a series of portraits of his close friends taken from photos found on social media.  Using social media to share and promote his drawings, he quickly developed a following and started to receive commission requests for portraits of children, significant others, pets, and celebrities. 

 

     Today, John Muylle continues to develop his one-of-a-kind drawing style and hopes to build a large enough portfolio to publish a book of his work.