Kevin A. Short

Kevin A. Short is a tal­ented Cal­i­for­nia surf artist who paints in the “plein air” style. His lush col­ors and expert use of light is evi­dent in every dynamic brush­stroke. Kevin’s work has been shown inter­na­tion­ally and has pub­lished a book of paint­ings on Tres­tles.

What was life like grow­ing up?
Life was good—pretty nor­mal 1960’s fam­ily: my brother, two sis­ters. We were a happy fam­ily up in Santa Barbara/Goleta. We were water peo­ple: swim­ming, sail­ing, body­surf­ing, and snor­kel­ing. We never noticed that money was tight. Mom was always try­ing some alchemy on the zuc­chini from our gar­den, not real­iz­ing she had invented the veg­gie burger. And, of course, fried bologna was a big treat.

I grew up with a father who was, and still remains, the smartest man I have ever met, a rocket sci­en­tist who shared with us his love for the ocean, sci­ence and life—the oppo­site of the nerd image.

It turns out that, these days, hav­ing good par­ents who love you and each other is no longer normal.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
Easy. Rick Griffin

When did you get your first surf­board?
It was Christ­mas 1973 after spend­ing months—MONTHS!—of try­ing to talk me out of surf­ing. My par­ents got me a Gree­nough Wilder­ness! My head exploded!

In the 70’s, most surfers seemed to my par­ents to be drug-hazed mis­an­thropes. And it didn’t help mat­ters that my hero was the acid-dropping Rick Griffin. It took them decades later to admit that, in the late 50’s, they had a surfboard.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
Man, that was pure joy. Wow! I still remem­ber it and I can still see it. Glid­ing on a glassy day. Col­lege Point. Goleta, Cal­i­for­nia. On a bor­rowed board. It was all the best of every­thing I knew of the ocean all at once.

Where did your inter­est in art come from?
I always had it. Born with it. In our fam­ily, it was con­sid­ered part of being a well-rounded person—math, sci­ence, lit­er­a­ture, art.  I had planned to fol­low in my father’s foot­steps and become a chem­i­cal engi­neer, but I had a high school chem­istry teacher who was so foul and bit­ter that I wanted noth­ing to do with it, and decided the next most appeal­ing thing was art. Besides, at the time, we had moved to New Mex­ico, and art took me back to the sea.

What is your process when cre­at­ing your art?
First is inspi­ra­tion — a color or a shape. Some­thing trig­gers the moment. I see AND feel some­thing. The image and a vibe gets burned into me. Then I just start “blap­ping” paint down. I will some­times divert into print­mak­ing if the image strikes me in that direc­tion. But 95% it is color painted and smeared onto the canvas.

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out? And why?
High­lands of Cen­tral Amer­ica.  It is a dif­fer­ent world from Coastal Cal­i­for­nia, and a dif­fer­ent value sys­tem. A lot of my world­view hinges on the work my uncle has achieved teach­ing basic farm­ing to fam­i­lies on vol­canic hill­sides. One man chang­ing the well-being of thou­sands (yes, thou­sands!!!) of peo­ple one com­post pile, or one anti-erosion tech­nique, at a time.

What is it that makes you such a nice per­son? What code do you live by?
I never think of myself as a nice per­son. When I am not behav­ing some­what shy, I am pretty bored with small talk, so I usu­ally keep quiet. How­ever, some­times at my museum open­ings or gallery open­ings, I meet a lot of peo­ple who are really inter­est­ing. They are prob­a­bly try­ing to leave for the rest of their evening, but my curios­ity gets a hold of me and you can’t shut me up.

My code — don’t brag, don’t exag­ger­ate, don’t lie. Turns out that truth is a rare com­mod­ity, but easy to remember.

Who/what inspires you?
The smile on my boys’ faces. And my wife has a smile that absolutely wrecks me.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
Why ruin today regret­ting yesterday? Learn from your mis­takes and move on.

Life is a com­plex sys­tem. How would I have known, after grow­ing up at the beach, that (in high school) mov­ing from the beach would make me a more of beach per­son?  I have friends that live near the beach but never go any­more. They take it for granted. Being near the ocean is awesome.

What are you most proud of?
Fif­teen years of happy mar­riage and three crazy, happy boys.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
Surf­ing has been the access to the rhythm of the ocean. The ocean calms me, brings me joy, restores my per­spec­tive. It is a source of sta­bil­ity. Surf­ing makes me happy! And, iron­i­cally, it pro­vides a life for us. I don’t paint surf-influenced paint­ings to sell them.  I paint them because I am inspired. I have to sell them because I can’t afford to keep them myself. That is as odd as it is cool to me.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Being in the ocean with my wife and kids.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
This is a great ques­tion, but I can’t nar­row that down to less than 100 peo­ple, not even that.

If I left out the so-called “has beens” from the old days, I’d be miss­ing the true point. I recently saw one of the old guard from the 50’s and 60’s dri­ving by my house with a trailer full of surf­boards to the beach where he runs his surf school, giv­ing a whole new gen­er­a­tion of surfer his “stoke”. That is a huge life­time of influence.

And just so that I don’t sound like I dodged the ques­tion… what­ever Laird’s next hare-brained exper­i­ment is. Laird seems to be the face put on the crew who intro­duced tow in, and then his shoot­ing the Mal­ibu pier on a stand up pad­dle­board has cre­ated a whole new ver­sion of surfing.

And, of course, all the surf stars for sure, for good or bad, and whether they want to or not.

What is in your cur­rent quiver? What is your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
My fav board is this Pat­ter­son cus­tom swal­low­tail Timmy made me after we surfed together down at Capo beach. He was dis­gusted at what I was rid­ing at the time, so he made me this amaz­ing board, best I have ever owned, some­thing that is between his BFS and twin­ner. He is a genius!

My cur­rent quiver is: 6’1” Tom Whitaker Fish; My magic Pat­ter­son 6”11”; 9’0” Phil Edwards Velzy board (prob­a­bly not sup­posed to ride it, but what is the point of surf­ing if it isn’t to have fun?); Patterson 9’0”  (the best kept secret is that Timmy is a freak­ishly good long­board shaper); Dave John­son 9’2” (very fun to ride); Town & Coun­try 9’3”; Patterson 11’3” fish­ing surf­board (that on small surf days is fun to pad­dle from San O to Tres­tles and surf back).

I spend most of my time surf­ing Tres­tles (espe­cially Mid­dles), some Cot­tons, and then I like State Park and North Beach (granted all in San Clemente). I pick the spot on a crowd/quality ratio.  I’d rather surf smaller waves with no crowd headaches. I surf to go have fun, not to star in my own surf movie.

What’s your favorite meal?
Gotta be my wife Amy’s spaghetti. It is “delish”—laughing fam­ily and friends are essen­tial ingredients.

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
My iPod is jammed with Jamaican 45’s that my cousin, Pete, dig­i­tized for me from his col­lec­tion of rare record­ings: Desmond Dekker, Ethiopi­ans, Kingsto­ni­ans, Lee “Scratch” Perry, et al. And I am a sucker for Linkin Park, the Chili Pep­pers, Van, Petty, Neil, and Jimi.

What causes/projects/organizations do you sup­port?
Boy, that is a tough one. There are some projects, a few causes. Clean water is num­ber one. I can’t surf in a few of my favorite places any­more because of the pol­lu­tion lev­els. MiO­cean seems to be get­ting more things solved locally, so I see them as very successful—just a hard­core get­ting things done. The Save Tres­tles group has done well so far. I have donated to Surfrider in appre­ci­a­tion to get­ting a mass of peo­ple to the Cal­i­for­nia Coastal Com­mis­sion hear­ings. And I really like every­body I have met from Surfrider.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
It is the sim­ple things that hold the most value: love, life, joy, fam­ily, eat­ing Pedro’s bur­ri­tos on the beach with my fam­ily. I am the rich­est man on earth.

What’s next for Kevin A. Short?
More trav­els around the world paint­ing. I have to get going on my next book.

More infor­ma­tion about Kevin A. Short and his art can be found here.