Juan Gonzalez IV (JGIV)

Born and raised on the south side of Chicago I grew up in a family of artists. I was into comic books back in the early 90\'s and loved drawing the characters. My cousins were very good at sketching heroes and villains we all started to create are own characters. My uncle who\'s a talented painter gave me art books of Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte\'s works of art and I started to pick up painting soon after. I went away from it for a while once I began college and started getting into graphic design. I love working as a graphic designer and own a t-shirt company along with my cousin called Rebel Monarchy. All the designs are inspired by Chicago culture, art and history. These shirts have been worn by co-host from Chicago\'s Best Ted Brunson on several shows. As I continue with the company I started to paint once again and got inspired from a different art genre(street art). I watched the documentary \"Exit through the gift shop\" and was blown away from all these artist throughout the world especially Banksy and Shepard Fairey. My passion for painting and now using stencil art and spray paint took my art skills to the next level. I started to experiment with different media use and working on big future projects which currently are being worked on. Art is my passion!