With a first class honours degree in fine art he exhibited widely for twenty years, primarily working with mixed media and then photography, before taking a post-graduate degree in computing. After that his own work concentrated on relationships between computers, drawing, artificial intelligence and creativity and on iconic language and was manifest mainly through written material. He achieved around seventy outputs including five books, a number of book chapters and journal papers and a range of exhibitions etc. which included a one-man show at the Serpentine Gallery in London and a portfolio in the British Journal of Photography.

Throughout this time he lectured at a number of universities and art schools, was appointed a Reader in Computers and Drawing and became a recognised expert in the field of visual computing. He was also a founding editor of the journal Digital Creativity, a founding member of both the Centre for Visual Computing and the Feral Drawing Group, a PhD supervisor and examiner, an external examiner on Masters awards at other universities (including the National Centre for Computer Animation) and was made an honorary Research Fellow at Exeter University.

At the time he took early retirement in 2006 Stuart Mealing was in post at the University of Plymouth (in Exeter) and had, until recently, been in charge of research in Art & Design at the university. In that capacity he coordinated a research unit of over seventy staff for about six years and controlled a budget of approximately a third of a million pounds per year. He also completed the quinquennial RAE return made during that time and later compiled the HEFCE submission which earned around a further million pounds for the three year period during which he left.

Outside of academia he has been involved at a high level in several sports, having represented Great Britain at under-20s rowing, been a member of the Welsh National fencing squad and having become a qualified fencing coach at all weapons. When an injury curtailed his fencing he took up distance running, later became a BSAC qualified diver, and then settled for gentler activity - maintaining a regular presence at the gym, swimming in foreign seas when the opportunity arose and walking on nearby Devon moors. Following an introductory course in 2010 he is also trying his hand at sailing and can now often be found either in his recently acquired Laser or floating alongside it.

In the past he has been Chair of Wales’s Ffotogallery, a founding committee member of his local, award-winning, community-run village shop and a charity fund-raiser. Among the less publicised moments in his life were several months working at a Cardiff steelworks, the completion of a deservedly unpublished novel and two appearances as a film extra - one in Judy Garland’s final film and another more than forty years later in Toya Wilcox’s latest.