David Lloyd

Backside Rip Tide

Came across the artwork of David Lloyd earlier this week and really like photograph painting combinations on his website. The image here is one of my favourites but Solar Arch and Blue Green Surf Girl are also stunners.

Stay away from surfing themes in your art, said the gallery people, because it won't be good for your career. So, at first, David Lloyd avoided images of waves and beaches and became well known in the art world for his complex, vibrant, and enigmatic abstractions. But the more he denied the impulse to explore the activity that has most colored his life, the stronger it became. He began to create surf paintings quietly, on the side, with devotion.

Lloyd believes anyone who surfs should be involved in design and has a number of bizarre-looking boards to record his journey. Lloyd admits that to search endlessly is better than to find. He relishes the longing for waves that may not even exist. It is that longing that lights his imagination ablaze to paint the parade of moments and days from the fiery ocean.

Lloyd's work evokes the memories that all surfers have stored up inside. They remind us of daydreams and of waves that might someday be, "Deep in your head there is this place, and it's not Huntington Pier," he says. “Surfers live in longing for that moment, they relish the anticipation. But arriving there is never as good as you picture it. Eventually, your memory mixes up all these snapshots of the best days and they all become part of this inner place." Anticipation and memory, those long-lived impressions flanking the instantaneous rush of a wave, are paramount.