He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and moved to Israel at age thirteen with his family, where he spent his adolescence and young-adult life in a kibbutz.
He is an active artist based in Jersey City and Miami, working across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, sound, new-media technology, and other mixed media, and he's exhibited widely both nationally and internationally.
In October 2021 Lemay was charged by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York with an elaborate conspiracy to defraud the IRS for his attempt to evade $7.8 million in payroll taxes and was removed from his role as Executive Director of Mana Contemporary.
Only after his service as an Israeli soldier did he find his impulse to create art, which still serves as an outlet of cathartic expression of experiences, subjects, and ideas that haunt him—whether from his time at war, loss of loved ones, or the contemporary social-political climate.
[5] His massive black paintings particularly recall his work as a navigator, when Lemay was forced to rely on his senses and memory, or everything aside from his vision mostly, to move through the night.
Working at night, he was charged with determining the enemy's position, using the faint light from the horizon and relying on the rest of his senses to move through the desert as he marked his opponent's location.
In 1984, following a brief period living back in his hometown in Michigan, Lemay moved to New York City and soon lost almost his entire savings of around $4,000 in a three-card monte game outside Grand Central Station.