Roberta Lannes Sealey is a teacher, an author, digital and fine artist as well as a photographer. At four years of age, she sold her first artwork (to her father) and first short story in high school. She went on to college and along the way decided she wanted to try doing stand-up comedy, and teach art and English as her solid backup. She did Open-Mic Night stand up at the Comedy Store from 1970-71, worked with the improv group until 1972 and went on to write jokes for some of the black comedians of that era until 1973.
She didn't return to fiction or fine art until the early 1980's. She had a series of gallery shows of paintings and photographs in Los Angeles and San Francisco from 1982-85. Her commercial art found its way into print advertising, greeting cards and various media. She also found success in writing speculative and dark- fantasy fiction in 1985 after taking a course at UCLA Extension with Dennis Etchison (who then published her first short story in that genre). To learn more, check out her Author page.
Her digital art grew out of her fine art. After grudgingly moving from a typewriter to a word processor, eventually it became natural for her to move from being an artist with paint, pastel, colored pencil canvas and paper to scanner and graphics software programs. Within a year of learning Photoshop, she sold her first CD cover.
During the early days of her digital art, she met many other artists online who were inspirational and provided much help in advancing her learning curve. The online Bryce, Photoshop and Paintshop Pro online communities were invaluable!
In connecting other digital artists, she found Walter Robertson of Artesano Studios with whom she created a Collaboration of Strangers, a book of one page poems and stories she wrote and Walter illustrated. The collaboration was an extraordinary experience since the two have never met or spoken except electronically. The spirit of the book came out of that inexplicable union that can occur when the right artists come together on the same plane The book is currently available for publishing. Use the contact form below to obtain a copy of the proposal and book.
Roberta lives in Los Angeles, California with husband British journalist, poet, and technology consultant Mark Sealey. Mark is now senior software developer for the J.Paul Getty Trust. Together, Roberta and Mark own MarkWorks LLC, a complete web solutions company.