Sheila Healey, (née Bellamy) was born in 1915 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Anglo Scots parents.[1] After attending school in West Sussex and Kent, she taught English in Argentina after the death of her father in 1930. In 1935 she moved to England to stay with her sisters. Marrying Hal Foote, they moved to Mexico City in 1936 where she studied painting and drawing with Angelina Beloff, the first wife of Diego Rivera. Here, during the period of the Mexican art renaissance, she met José Clemente Orozco who admired her work and advised her: throw away your art books - just work. In 1938 they moved to Guatemala City; her marriage ended after 5 years and in 1940 she met archaeologist explorer Giles Healey whom she married in 1943, settling in Los Angeles before a further filming trip to Mexico. Encouraged by sculptor Henry Moore in New York in 1946, they moved westwards to Pacific Palisades and in 1947 she studied with both Rico Lebrun and William Brice in Los Angeles. After moving to West Sussex from Big Sur, California in 1970, she learnt that many of her paintings had been destroyed in a fire in Big Sur in 1971. During her time in Mexico and Big Sur, the Healeys' friendships with other artists are well documented; such as Lee Mullican [2] and Luchita Hurtado,[3] Kaffe Fassett and Charles and Ray Eames[4]
Sheila Healey's changing themes over 75 years have displayed continuity with both the portrait and with handling of colour, an essential human-ness being seen as a consistent thread through all her art.[5]
1943 Vincent Price Gallery, Beverley Hills
1946 Guatemala City
1947 Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena
1947 Los Angeles County Museum of Art
1947 University of California, Los Angeles
1948 Norlyst Gallery, New York solo show [6]
1954-64 Coast Gallery, Big Sur, California
1999 Sheila Healey Retrospective: A Painter's Journey: from Buenos Aires to Big Sur 20 September - 2 October 1999 - 27, Cork Street, London[7]