Background
Healey was born in 1915 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Anglo Scots parents. After attending school in West Sussex and Kent, she taught English in Argentina after the death of her father in 1930.
Healey was born in 1915 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Anglo Scots parents. After attending school in West Sussex and Kent, she taught English in Argentina after the death of her father in 1930.
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. 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 Los Angeles
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. 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 and Luchita Hurtado, Kaffe Fassett and Charles and Ray Eames
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
Textile artist and designer Kaffe Fassett opened the 2012 Exhibition:
Growing up barefoot in Big Sur, California, I first learned about colour from Sheila Healey. She is a great collector of colour.
I think of her work as repeating pools of colour. That deep red palette that comes from South America.
lieutenant"s just so life-enhancing.
lieutenant"s blood red. lieutenant"s the source of things. When I"m teaching my workshops I always say that what we"re trying to do is make colour glow.
That is what our task is.
Make it come alive! Don"t kill it! Don’t make it drop dead! And this woman, whose show I"m so happy to be here for, makes colour glow. 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
1954-1964 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
2005 Sheila Healey: A Celebration. 31 May - 4 June 2005: 27, Cork Street London W1
2012 Sheila Healey: A Retrospective, Lewis Elton Gallery, University of Surrey, 20 March - 4 April
Healey agreed to sit for sculptor Jon Edgar in West Sussex during 2010 and the terracotta head was unveiled at her Retrospective exhibition at Lewis Elton Gallery in 2012.