Meet Guy Combes

Guy was born in Kenya in 1971, the son of the late wildlife artist, Simon Combes and his wife Susie.  At the age of eight, Guy and his sister Cindy, 12, were transferred to school in England for the remainder of their education.  His interest in art developed throughout this schooling and at home where he began to learn technique from his father.  After school he started at Cheltenham Art College where he experimented further with visual creativity in sculpture and three dimensional design, and then went on to study interior design at the Inchbald in London where he was awarded a diploma.

Guy returned to Kenya in 1992 and spent the next ten years between there, Brighton and Cheltenham in England, working on commissions and supporting this income with a variety of jobs which led to him to develop an interest in the catering and licensing trade.

In 2002 Guy moved to Soysambu, a 50000 acre ranch in the Rift Valley where his father was living with his second wife, Kat.  Here Guy took on a management job at a tourist camp and worked towards an exhibition of paintings depicting the Swahili Coast, inspired by a visit to Zanzibar.  The exhibition was at Peponi Hotel in Lamu and sold out.  Guy then began working towards another exhibition in Nairobi and this was also successful.

In 2004 he began a job as manager of Island Camp -  a tented tourist lodge on an island on Lake Baringo.  During this time Guy tragically lost his father to an attack by a Cape Buffalo on Soysambu and after a short time at another lodge job, he decided to travel to Australia and New Zealand.  In 2006 he attended a retrospective of his father's work at the Hiram Blauvelt Museum in New York where he was offered the prestigious position of Artist in Residence.

Since then Guy has been concentrating full time on painting and visiting various trade shows around the US.  He intends to pursue painting as a career while helping with various conservation issues in Kenya, the most important of these being the development of Soysambu ranch into a protected conservancy, which will guarantee an essential wildlife corridor in the spectacular Rift Valley.