As some of you know I have been spending most of my time over the past few years painting. I paint waves mostly. Waves that I would want to ride in different settings, places, etc.
If I can’t be riding them, at least I can be painting them. My style is somewhere in the twilight zone between cartoon and reality, yet neither.
I have just turned 78 and have been surfing most of my life — rode my first wave at 7. I have no idea how many waves I have ridden, but it’s fair to say it’s a lot. This has led to a lot of wear and tear on my old body.
In 1965, I took a bad wipeout at Pipeline and hurt my back, getting rammed into the bottom sitting down. It was recommended that this be treated with pain management and hopefully it would heal if I took it slow.
Have I ever been known to take it slow?
This was the original injury that led to a lifetime of back problems. Then I did it again in 1997 at Hanalei on Kauai. This time it put me down for 9 months and included two ruptured hernias at the same time. For this, I had no choice but to take it slow.
The couch, TV and a lot of eating later, I gained 45 loving pounds that have just decided to make me their permanent home. I go on “programs” to take it off and lose a few, then they get lonely for me and come back along with bringing a few friends with them. It’s been a struggle.
But I hung in and was able to keep surfing. About 10 years ago it got too painful to pop up any longer, so I switched to a stand-up paddleboard. At first reluctantly, but soon I was really liking it. I was amazed at how powerful those things could be thanks to being able to use the paddle as an extra fin.
Mickey Munoz turned me onto this and Jimmy Terrell at Quickblade Paddles in Costa Mesa tuned me into the ultimate surfing paddles. I was stoked. This was all good until I got A-fib, just about the time COVID-19 hit. Slowed me down to maybe one wave a day, and then to maybe one wave a month to, well … maybe one wave again one of these days. I lost my wind. My family of pounds started inviting all their friends over and they wouldn’t go home.
Enter art.
I painted a little bit in high school, mostly watercolor. My art teacher at Huntington Beach High, Eddie Droan, was a surfer and got me into it. Then I started doing airbrush during the 1980s when I was working at SURFER magazine. Sold them in a gallery that used to be in Dana Point Harbor and did well for a while.
Later, when I first built my casa in Mexico in the early 2000s, I started doing acrylics. Just for fun, nothing serious. One of my guests who was an artist left me an acrylic set, so I figured “why not,” I had the time.
It was simple, colorful stuff with frogs and palm trees, geckos, dogs, surf and whatever. I put ‘em on the walls in the casa and people would buy them. They were fun.
When I started not being able to surf, I began painting all the time and got serious about it. I got a lot of encouragement from my wife, the Pretty Raquel. Over these last few years, it has become my main source of income and my passion.
It’s totally consumed me.
I think about it all the time and dream about it when I am sleeping. Everywhere I go, I log into my “painting ideas” brain cell the stuff that I see. Colors, cloud formations, trees, just interesting stuff that might fit one of my wave scenes. It has kept my surf stoke alive and it’s become what I do.
I have been offering the paintings on my Facebook and Instagram pages mostly. I have some in a gallery in South Carolina, some in Todos Santos, in a Maritime Museum in Virginia and now am being displayed at Dana Bay Gallery here in Dana Point.
Which leads me to the point of today’s story: “Color of Cool,” my first open-to-the-public art exhibition, will be at the gallery in Dana Point from 5 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 10 and noon to 6 p.m. on Oct. 11. I will be there with some new pieces and am hoping that many of you, ok, all of you, will come down and check it out. Say hello, talk story, buy a painting, whatever. I would love to see ya.