70 Cornwall Today

waves of expressionSome SurferS regard riding waveS aS an art form. for theSe artiStS, the connection between art and Surfing goeS deeper than that.

words by Alex Wade, photographs by ocean-image.com/Mike Newman

Surfing permeates every corner of alasdair Lindsay’s house in hayle. vintage boards are stacked here and there, surfing magazines are piled up, and on the kitchen table is a copy of bustin’ down

the door, legendary australian surfer wayne ‘rabbit’ bartholomew’s account of how he and a handful of antipodean wave-riders charged the hawaiian north Shore some 40 years ago. as Lindsay brings me a glass of water, and his partner tracey and young daughter Kitty settle down to watch children’s tv, i open bartholomew’s book at random. the following passage leaps out:

“Surfing’s young… people still see surfing as a thing for kids, a youthful outlet. it’s not that at all. if you can approach it as just this unbelievable art form, you’re going to develop it all the time… you’re getting more in tune with nature… and you’re going to be a much purer person.”

for Lindsay, born in chester in 1975, bartholomew’s words ring true – even if he is hesitant to agree that surfing can be an art form in its own right. “i think that angle can be a bit cheesy,” says Lindsay, who settled in cornwall in 1996, “but surfing is certainly inspirational. the lifestyle is all-embracing. it informs my work, even if this isn’t always obvious.” Lindsay’s work blends figurative forms with abstraction, and is hewn

above: AlAsdAir lindsAy with some of his mAny boArds right: surfer

And hut, low sun, by AlAsdAir lindsAy

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Art

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72 Cornwall Today

from memories and sketches of things he sees while surfing the Cornish coasts near his home. No fewer than 312 of his prints are on permanent display on the Cunard Liner Queen Mary II, while another proud moment came when he won second prize in the Hunting Art Prizes 2004, a competition which saw him up against over 1,800 artists. In Cornwall, Lindsay’s paintings are to be seen at Cornwall Contemporary in Penzance and Beside the Wave in Falmouth. His palette is usually bright and unerringly seductive, but if obvious surfing motifs are not always present, allusions to Californian beach culture, often in a nuanced, evocative fashion, are clear. Moreover, the very process of surfing plays a vital role in Lindsay’s compositions: “There’s a meditative quality to surfing,” he says. “Your imagination and thought processes are on a higher plane. I think for many people, surfing lifts them above ordinary life.”

For Ges Wilson, surfing – along with sailing – unlocks the door to “the most magical place of all” – the sea. “The sea is the last great space,” says Wilson, who has been surfing the beaches of West Cornwall since 1978. Jessica, Tristan and Tegen, her children from her first marriage to Colin Wilson, one of the key players in the development of British surfing, all surf, and Wilson is regularly to be seen catching waves at places like Sennen Cove and Godrevy. She couldn’t, indeed,

imagine another lifestyle. “Surfing is so life-affirming,” says Wilson, who works as a freelance art teacher for the Tate St Ives. “I couldn’t separate life, the sea, surfing and sailing. They’re all inextricably intertwined.”

Wilson was born and bred in Leicestershire, but felt drawn to the ocean from an early age. “I grew up on farms, riding horses in the countryside,” she says, “but from the age of seven I felt I’d been born in the wrong place.” She was, it might be said, imbued with what the French writer Romain Pollard identified as “the oceanic feeling”, a desire for the sea linked to the sense of the sublime. Pollard’s oceanic feeling was “a feeling of the eternal… a source of vital renewal… like a sheet of water which I feel flushing under the bark”. Without this, there was no connection, no “contact”.

Wilson soon gravitated westwards. She attended Exeter University, where she studied art and, thanks to regular trips to North Devon, learnt to surf. But despite being obviously talented as an artist, she decided not to pursue art on a full-time basis. “I wanted my art to retain its integrity, and didn’t want it to be something pressured by the need to make money,” she explains. To fast forward a quarter of a century is to find an ebullient, enthused woman whose work ranges from impassioned abstracts in acrylic to more considered nudes, the latter often drawn from her family. Wilson’s

above: Ges wilson, an artist for whom the sea is “the most maGical place of all”

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Cornwall Today 73

semi-abstract paintings are of the beach, the sea, the coastal littoral, and, especially, waves. If she’s not surfing them, they’re in her mind, forming the genesis of new work.

Even more devoted to what the American writer Jack London famously described as “the Sport of Kings” is 45-year-old furniture maker, abstract artist and sculptor Jonty Henshall. Despite being born in Cheshire, Henshall’s childhood was punctuated by regular holidays in Anglesey, where he discovered surfing by means of a wooden bellyboard in 1970. Having learned to stand up he switched to windsurfing, again around Anglesey. Later, a degree in biology at Exeter University saw Henshall indulge both sports, his surfing having come on leaps and bounds after both exposure to one of surfing’s iconic films, Crystal Voyager, and a summer holiday in Jersey. “I saw people trimming and turning, and it was as if a light went on in my head,” he recalls.

Henshall was smitten. He abandoned an attempt to embrace conventional employment in London after just a day, settling in West Penwith with little by way of a clear idea of his next steps other than that he would go surfing as often as possible. Which is, indeed, exactly what he has done, albeit that Henshall’s creative urges have also dominated his life, too. His driftwood furniture, at once rustic and stylish, has been featured in the Financial Times, while his skill as a

craftsman sees him constantly in demand for building artists’ studios. He also creates abstract artwork from surfboard resin – on show at Cornwall Contemporary – and even finds the time to make his own unique custom surfboards. And time and again, beachside found objects appear in Henshall’s work, from lobster pot plastic to bottle tops.

But most of all, Henshall goes surfing. As he says: “Surfing is my mistress.” As mistresses go, surfing has to be one of the less problematic ones, and perhaps, in looking at the life of a stylish and dedicated surfer-artist such as Henshall, it’s possible to conclude that surfing really is an art form. Or even, just maybe, that art is surfing.

► See www.alasdairlindsay.com for more information about Alasdair Lindsay.

► See www.stisa.co.uk/artist-gallery/ges-wilson for information about Ges Wilson. Her work can be seen at the Essex Tyler Gallery in Mousehole, the St Ives Society and the Alverne Gallery in Penzance.

► See www.jontyhenshall.co.uk for more information about Jonty Henshall.

information

clockwise from top: beachside found objects often feature in jonty henshall’s art, sculpture and furniture

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