David Mueller is an American painter working in the traditional representational manner, and one of the most decorated artists of his generation within Oil Painters of America. Creativity runs in the family: his mother was a craftswoman and his father and uncle were both cartoonists. A graduate of The American Academy of Art in Chicago, Mueller began his career in graphic design and illustration before moving to Cincinnati in 1989, and in 1991 a patron gave him the break that set him painting full time for galleries and private commissions. He now lives and works in Northern Kentucky. Mueller describes his work as Painterly Realism, balancing highly refined drawing and rendering of the figure with passages of loose, visible brushwork, often setting decorative objects within his compositions, art within art. His commissions include two gubernatorial portraits and one state senatorial portrait in the Ohio Statehouse, with significant works held by Procter & Gamble and St Peter in Chains Cathedral, Cincinnati, and in private collections worldwide. He holds Master Signature status in Oil Painters of America and won the Gold Medal in the Master Signature Division at the OPA National Juried Exhibition, followed by a second Gold Medal at the Eastern Regional exhibition the same year. In 2009 his work appeared on a Christmas ornament on the White House Christmas tree. The Cincinnati Art Club, founded in 1890 by figures including Frank Duveneck and John H. Twachtman, has been central to Mueller's life since 1990; at twenty seven he became its youngest ever board member, and for over twenty four years he has taught his Sophisticated Fundamentals programme of painting and drawing. He has exhibited with galleries across the United States, including a one man show at Arcadia Gallery, New York in 2005, and is represented in Britain by Gladwell & Patterson.