John Mubiru was born in East Africa in 1965 and is the son of a civil engineer. Coming from a family with five artists and designers, art become a way of life for John at a early age. He was educated at St. Henry's College, Kitovu. St Henry's strong art culture which had already produced a lot of notable African Artists helped shape his early work. Due to civil strife in Uganda his family went into exile to Kenya in 1980 where he attended The Kenya Polytechnic and majored in Applied Sciences and Mechanical Engineering. He later migrated to the United States in 1988. There, John Mubiru studied 3D Computer Animation and Computer Aided Designing at the Center for the Media Arts in Manhattan.
While living in Kenya, John, already an avid sculpture and painter, was introduced to Batik (a form of painting on cloth with dyes using wax as a blocker) by Kenyan and exiled Ugandan artists. His early style of Batiks was strongly inspired by artists like Wasswa, Noah Nyanzi and Mugalula Mukiibi. He worked in this media for 11 years developing a style and technique of his own. After moving to the United States he started working in oils with a strong impressionistic abstract and figurative style he learnt while working with Batik.
He paints images of his native Africa, bringing the canvas to life with dances, ceremonies, landscapes and regalia of the Massai, Turkana, Baganda, Nandi, Swahili and many more tribes of the African plains. In his work we gain an amazing insight into day-to-day activities into lives of a people who are rich in color, culture and tradition.