James Valerio was born in 1938 in Chicago, Illinois, where he currently lives and teaches at Northwestern University. His mother was an artist, and as a child he took weekend classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. When a back injury prevented him from finding work as a laborer, Valerio enrolled in night classes for art, where he met Seymour Rosofsky. Rosofsky introduced him to Ray Yoshida, among others, and encouraged him to study at the School of the Art Institute, which he did on a fellowship. He received his BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966 and 1968, respectively. Valerio is a contemporary representational painter who specializes in the photorealistic rendering of the figure, still life, and landscape. 

Valerio has also had solo exhibitions at the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington (1983), the University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City (1994), and the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina (2000). Valerio is represented in the collections of these institutions as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Arkansas Art Center, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others.