Sebastian Horsley

Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley and his mother at a retrospective of his work at Spectrum London gallery, London, 2007.
Born	Marcus A. Horsley (1962-08-08)8 August 1962 Holderness, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died	17 June 2010(2010-06-17) (aged 47) London, England
Cause of death	Drug overdose
Occupation	Artist, writer
Spouse(s)	Evlynn Smith (m. 1983–90)

Sebastian Horsley (born Marcus A. Horsley; 8 August 1962 – 17 June 2010) was a London artist. Horsley's writing often revolved around his dysfunctional family, his drug addictions, sex, and his reliance on prostitutes.

Horsley was born in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was the eldest son of Nicholas Horsley, with a younger brother of his, Jason Horsley, attending Pocklington School as a day-boy in the early 1980s. Their grandfather, Alec Horsley, was the founder of Northern Foods, and their father replaced him as chairman of the company from 1970 until the role was assumed by Christopher Haskins. According to Horsley's autobiography, Dandy in the Underworld, his birth name was Marcus, but his mother had decided to change it to Sebastian by the time she had returned from the hospital. His name was officially changed by deed poll in 1967.

Horsley had an older sister, a psychotherapist named Ashley, as well as a younger brother, Jason Horsley. His mother, the former Valerie Edwards, was a Welsh typist. After his parents divorced, Horsley's father married Sabitha Sarkar (married 1975-1987) and Alwyne Law (married 1998). His mother did not remarry but later became known as Valerie Walmsley-Hunter.

As Horsley wrote in his memoirs, following the divorce of his parents in 1975: "Clearly everyone in my life who should have been vertical was horizontal." In an interview Horsley's mother gave to The Sunday Times, she admitted that her son's childhood was profoundly difficult: "I don't think Nicholas ever went to bed sober and I was always in a fog. Sebastian and my other two children were accidents and, though it seems shocking to admit, I drank all the way through my pregnancies."

In 1983, Horsley married Evlynn Anne Smith (8 September 1962 – 18 April 2003), the daughter of a Scottish painter and decorator, and who, together with Meriel Scott, constituted the art and furniture-design company Precious McBane. Horsley and Smith separated in 1990; she died of an aneurysm at age 40.