My experience of the coastal lifestyle isn’t swaying palm trees and hammocks, hula girls with ukuleles or vistas of unexploited crystal-clear water. As a kid growing up in suburbs of the OC, miles away from the beach, I had to brave the urban elements via Schwinn Stingray to get to the water.

And once there, “Surf City" was way more “Gotham” than groovy. In short, Brian Wilson’s Califomia dream looked nothing like the one I grew up in. Watermen living in a huge metropolitan basin have to handle what the city presents them. Traffic, overcrowded everything, visible air, opaque water, steel/cement/language barriers, density, 24 hour surround sound, topped off with a twist of a pop culture over stimulation. In my paintings, surfers compete with the barriers and ballyhoo that under any other circumstance would pummel a man into eventual submission, stifling his zeal, swallowing him up whole into life's daily grind. The urban surfers are powerful, stoic figures, battling the elements, intrusions and vicissitudes of city life - My surfers brave all for the privilege of a saltwater baptism.

http://www.damianfulton.com