Sean Starr was born Sean Gregory Starr in San Diego, California on April 28, 1968 to a Ukrainian father and an Irish mother who had relocated to California from Cleveland so Sean's father Dale could pursue a career in writing. After a couple years the family returned to Ohio to the Ukrainian/Polish immigrant settlement of Parma Heights in Cleveland. In 1976, the Starr family moved to San Antonio, Texas.

Sean's first efforts at painting came at the age of 13 shortly after the family moved to the small Texas town of Pipe Creek. A small, abandoned building that for decades was used as a smokehouse on the 70 acre plot was quickly taken over by Sean and his brother Jeffrey and converted into an art studio and music room. Local musicians, The Andrews Brothers would come by on a regular basis to play music while Sean painted. Sean painted dozens of paintings of birds during this time.

At the age of 15, Sean left home and traveled by Greyhound Bus to Orlando, Florida where he got a job cleaning stained glass windows at Church Street Station. Over the three year period he spent in Florida, he was heavily influenced by the translucence and color combinations of the glass he was working with daily. Now 19, Starr returned to Texas and started working for his father as a commercial sign painter. It was during this time that he began painting regularly and set up his first exhibits in small venues around Texas. While living in the town of Floresville, just east of San Antonio, he penned the first of a series of guest editorials for the Wilson County News. A job offer in commercial graphics brought him to Seattle in 1999, which was followed by several hospitalizations for depression over a period of 5 years as he struggled through a failing marriage.

In early 2005, after a near fatal car accident while traveling in Albert Lea, Minnesota he decided to devote his time to the exploration of his artwork and writing. He moved to the city of Tacoma, Washington and immersed himself in its large art community and started the first of his abstract work. His studio was open to the public during Tacoma's Studio Tour where tour groups were allowed access to his work that had not been seen in more than ten years.

On January 21, 2006, his first live painting project was held at the University of Washington's Tacoma Campus where he painted a massive piece to the music of British singer Morrissey's music that measured 8 feet tall by 24 feet wide in front of an audience.

While working in Tacoma, he penned an essay concerning the current state of the artistic community in the city of Tacoma that was distributed through the city's ListServ that caused a response of over 1,000 emails in a 48 hour period that nearly caused a shutdown of the service. The city quickly provided a venue (The Temple Theater) where Starr and several other artists and teachers from the University conducted a meeting to discuss the issues raised in the essay. Hundreds of artists, gallery owners, and city officials were in attendance. The meeting led to the formation of five work groups that are still working today to implement the directions chosen at the now historic meeting.

After working on several projects with the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce and being given the honor of being the Chamber's first “Meet the Artist” Sean accepted the offer from his brother Jeffrey (also an artist) to relocate to San Francisco to pursue his artwork full time.

On February 1, 2006 Starr relocated to San Francisco and set up his studio. After a few weeks he sat down with Award Winning photojournalist Ryan Notch over dinner and finalized the details for Starr's latest project that would have the two traveling through Napa Valley painting at wineries. Over a period of 3 months Sean worked at 11 wineries, producing a total of 11 paintings, as Ryan captured the experience on film. Rocca Vineyards held the opening reception with all 11 pieces on display on May 27, 2006 in downtown Napa, California. Letters came in from Governor Schwarzenegger, actors Mel Gibson, and Virginia Madsen congratulating Starr on the project in Napa.

On March 23, 2006 Sean attended the opening of his show titled “Lyrical Abstraction” at the Agora Gallery in New York's Manhattan. The show's title was derived from a review of Sean's work by gallery director Angela DiBello who asserted that “Starr has created his own version of Abstract Expression.”

In the summer of 2006, Starr started volunteering with San Francisco's Institute For Unpopular Culture writing copy for press releases and designing graphics. It was at this time that Starr made his first trip to the southern California community of Big Bear in the San Bernardino mountains just outside Los Angeles. Starr spent several months painting alongside Matthew Thomas and Greg Zook. This trip resulted in Starr and abstract painter Matt Thomas, and writer Colin Nasseri collaborating on a document that eventually became “The Idealist Manifesto.”

The manifesto served as an expression of artistic philosophy that was quickly embraced after its publication by artists from around the world, and has been signed by visionaries such as Academy Award nominated actress, Virginia Madsen and painter Frank Dammers from the Netherlands.

Institute For Unpopular Culture founder David Ferguson arranged a show for Sean in February of 2007 at the Workspace Gallery in the city’s Mission District. The show created a flurry of media coverage after its title “Morrissey Ruined My Life” was released. Attempting to recreate the atmosphere of his studio, Starr painted a huge piece (8 feet by 12 feet) in front of an audience of nearly 1,000 people, to the music of British singer and songwriter Morrissey, who Starr had dubbed the world’s greatest living poet. Visitors to the show flew in from as far away as Rome and Israel to be present at the exhibit.

It was at this time that Starr was approached by San Francisco writer Colin Nasseri to co-author the book “You, Me and Morrissey”, an autobiographical collection of short stories that was first released by French publisher Editions Marie-Claude. Just a few hours after being made available as a pre-release on Starr’s MySpace page, orders poured in from the US, Britain, France, Greece, and Italy. Unprepared for the success following the release, Editions Marie-Claude was sold to Texas publisher Subculture Books who has re-released the book. In 2008, Subculture Books released his collection of artistic philosophies in the best selling "The Artist's Tao: 44 Principles for an Artist's Life" as well as multiple works of his poetry in the collection "Lost Souls in the Fish Bowl" with the Ursa Major Poets, a group Starr founded that performed regularly at the Ursa Major Poetry Slam in Big Bear City, California.

Starr now lives and works in Big Bear Lake, California with his wife, and fellow artist Kayleigh Starr where they operate Starr Studios Custom Signs, a company that provides custom hand painted signage to business owners in the Greater Los Angeles Area.