Andrè Petty was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois to Fern and George Petty. He discovered a passion for sketching, drawing, and painting at a young age mostly by reading comic books and recreating the characters and scenes found within their pages. He spent four years in the United States Navy before being hired on the Peoria Fire Department where he's been employed for over 21 years. Looking back on his life André says, "most of the periods of my life where I had either lost my way or was the most stressed, I eventually realized I wasn't being creative in any way at all."
After coming to terms with the therapeutic qualities his work holds in his life (and with help and advice from close friends) Petty submitted pieces for the Peoria Heights 2019 Fine Arts Fair and was accepted. Later the same year came the Peoria Art Guild Riverfront Art Fair, a mural of Peoria's favorite son, Richard Pryor, for the group Big Picture Peoria, and a March 2020 cover shot for Peoria Magazine where he was selected as Best New/Emerging Artist of 2019.
