Before - Limited Edition 4 of 8 Photograph

Guy Sealey's career in art began not in a hushed studio, but in the brutal theater of War. His muse did not dance lightly into his life sprinkling beautifully-colored trails of artistic inspiration! He found his passion and purpose through the grit of standing night guard in the South African army during Apartheid. Mandatory two-year service fighting for racial segregation under a corrupt government made him angry and feeling hopeless -- until he started creating. Those army creations ostensibly resembled advertising posters, but contained veiled anti-apartheid messages within beautiful imagery. When his clueless commanding officers commissioned the work for their homes he knew he’d found an outlet for his frustration and his ultimate path. Feeling the power of paintings as protest, his artistic vision was born: "it better fucking move you and stand for something!" Convincing his father, a Harvard man and CEO of a South African coal mining group, to pay for his art education – in the U.S. – was his next challenge to overcome but he eventually made his way to the Parsons School of Design in NYC, graduating with a BFA in Communication Design. Guy spent his early career in advertising where his desire for honest communications and inability to speak anything other than the truth in his work got him kicked out of more than a few meetings and one or two agencies. Advertising is still not the place where truth is celebrated. And so, he left. Or it left him. Doesn’t really matter. Now, he’s back in the studio where he should have been all along. In fact, according to his mentor, Tibor Kalman who he worked for in 1989-1991 at M&Co., "you are cursed and blessed with the eternal pain and privilege of an artist, you have my sincerest congratulations and condolences". Sealey's artistic talents find outlet in myriad media, and wherever he goes. A trained master butcher and accomplished chef, Guy's passion for the unadulterated led him to a side passion and part-time career at Fleischer’s Craft Butchery, in Westport. Guy's work fuses photography, digital design and paint to develop deeply evocative, sometimes sweet but mostly painfully honest and emotional works, mining family dynamics, political and social issues. Sealey, 51, lives in Westport, CT, with his wife and 3 children. And his dog. Named after South Africa's greatest warrior: Nelson Mandela.