Keiron Lewis

Keiron Lewis is a surfer and tal­ented graphic designer liv­ing in Syd­ney. Also known as Sea­mouse, Keiron pub­lishes his work on his pop­u­lar surf blog, Pin­niped. We talked to Keiron to find out more.

What was your life like grow­ing up?
I don’t think I could have asked for much bet­ter really.  I grew up about an hour away from Lon­don on the south coast and was lucky enough to have both the beach and the coun­try­side as my play­grounds.  I had a very sup­port­ive fam­ily, and both of my par­ents are very cre­ative.  When I was 14, my dad took me down to Corn­wall on the first of (what I would con­vince him to make) our annual sum­mer surf­ing hol­i­days.   From day one, I was hooked—getting up at day­break and stay­ing in the water till din­ner.  It didn’t take long before a cou­ple of weeks in sum­mer wasn’t enough and I started hunt­ing out places to surf at home and drag­ging friends into it too.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
I can recall almost per­fectly the first ride I had where I stood, turned and rode along the face.  My dad had got me a 9’7” Mal for my 17th birth­day, and I can remem­ber being so sur­prised by how good is was to feel the glide the board had and how it con­nected with the wave.  I was grin­ning like an idiot over the top of the waves at my mates and couldn’t pad­dle back out fast enough to do it again.  I wasn’t surf­ing par­tic­u­larly great, but I’m sure that wave will stay as one of my favorites rid­den for a very long time.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
My grand­fa­ther has always been my biggest hero—the nicest and most intel­li­gent man you could ever ask to meet.  He has an ency­clo­pe­dia for a brain and I find noth­ing more inspir­ing to my per­sonal life and my art­work than to hear him talk story.

Graph­i­cally, I always admired those artists that pro­vided art­work for skate­board com­pa­nies, and mainly those pro­duced for Choco­late or Girl.  I didn’t know at the time, but I was look­ing at the work of peo­ple like  Even Hecox, Spike Jonze, Andy Jenk­ins, Andy Mueller and Tony Larson—people that still inspire me to this day.

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out and why?
Fiji was amaz­ing.  I ended up being there for a month and a half back in 2003. I had a blast stay­ing in the worst accom­mo­da­tion I’ve ever been in and mak­ing good friends with the staff and peo­ple in their vil­lage.  The waves there were unreal too—the most beau­ti­ful colours of blue, full of the most amaz­ing wildlife and would repeat­edly kick my ass on a daily basis.  I loved the peo­ple and the lifestyle too. For me, if I go trav­el­ing, I want to go some­where com­pletely dif­fer­ent from home to really rock my senses and hope­fully give me a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on things.  Fiji will def­i­nitely do that.

Who/what inspires you?
So much inspires me and that’s a won­der­ful thing. You can be walk­ing along the road, see some­thing, do some­thing or maybe just over­hear a part of someone’s con­ver­sa­tion and it can spark an idea.  If I’m feel­ing low on inspi­ra­tion while work­ing, I usu­ally throw on some music and check out what other peo­ple have been cre­at­ing via the inter­net.  I con­stantly get that “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that” feel­ing, which is usu­ally pretty moti­vat­ing and I always like to see if I can adapt other people’s meth­ods or ideas into my own work.

A few people’s work I’ve been inspired by recently are Natha­nial Rus­sell, Rob Ryan, Stu­art Kolakovic, Ryan Tatar,  Mike Perry, Jean Jul­lien, Cody Hud­son, Mor­gan Maassen, Paul Rand, Dieter Rams, Alex Kopps, Vam­pire Week­end, Ryan Hey­ward and Ivan May­orquin to name but a few.

What is your process for cre­at­ing your art?
It all starts out as an idea or phrase that I have to jot down quickly … as not to for­get.  I like putting some of my humour into my work and to gen­er­ally just try to be hon­est about the idea I’m try­ing to rep­re­sent. When I cre­ate a new piece, I gen­er­ally sketch out ideas in pen­cil before either turn­ing them into a print of some kind or import­ing them into Photoshop/Illustrator to sharpen up and colour digitally—all depend­ing on what’s hap­pen­ing with the image after­wards.  I was trained as a designer and that method of pro­duc­ing work has trans­ferred nat­u­rally into my illustration.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
A good guess is bet­ter than a bad measurement.

What are you most proud of?
Mar­ry­ing my beau­ti­ful wife.  I’m really for­tu­nate to have such an amaz­ing per­son in my life.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
It’s been such a big part of my life for so long now; I can’t really imag­ine it not being there.  I think, like most surfers, it’s brought me friends, taken me to places I’d oth­er­wise not have trav­eled to and given me a lot of joy.  I hap­pily hold my hand up to being well and truly addicted though.  I con­stantly watch the weather and tides, and get mas­sive with­drawal symp­toms if I don’t get in the water often enough.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Friends, fam­ily, being around the ocean and cre­at­ing things.  As long as I can keep these things in my life, I’m sure I’ll always remain content.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
The thing I really like about surf­ing at the moment is that it’s not just the spon­sored surf stars shap­ing the path any­more.  I love that shapers are finally being given the recog­ni­tion they deserve too.  I’d say that Joel Tudor opened the door for today’s ride—anything aes­thetic. Thomas Camp­bell opened everyone’s eyes to what could be done with it and shops like Mol­lusk then put it in the hands of you and me.

To name a few who are doing inter­est­ing things, I’d say Derek Hynd, Tom Wegener, Danny Hess,  Alex Kopps, Carl Ekstrom, Richard Ken­vin and John McCam­bridge.

What is your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
I made myself a 6′ twin keel fish awhile back and that’s so much fun.  The feel­ing of rid­ing some­thing you’ve made your­self is really great and I’d rec­om­mend it to any­one.   I really love surf­ing the pass in Byron Bay, but pretty much any right– hand point break will keep me grin­ning for days.  Say­ing that even though it’s small, mushy, grey and cold, there’s no place like home.

What’s your favorite meal?
I really couldn’t nar­row it down to one meal.  Much like music, dif­fer­ent food appeals depen­dent on my mood.  I do love try­ing out new recipes and going out to good restau­rants though.

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
I don’t actu­ally have an iPod.  I really like the phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion of putting on a CD or even bet­ter some vinyl.  Plus, cover art plays just as big a part in the expe­ri­ence for me and is a mas­sive source of inspi­ra­tion.  I can’t count the amount of music I’ve bought over the years purely based on the cover art. It plays a huge part in my life and my work, and I’m con­stantly on the look­out for new artists and sounds.  Recently I’ve been lis­ten­ing to The Shins, Kids at Risk, Mega­puss, The Acorn, Band of Skulls, Yeasayer, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Depart­ment of Eagles, The XX, Holy Fuck, Local Natives, Edward Sharpe and the Mag­netic Zeros and the new Vam­pire Week­end album.

What causes/organizations do you sup­port?
I used to sup­port a few of the big char­ity orga­ni­za­tions, but I kept receiv­ing demands ask­ing me to increase my monthly dona­tions.  It ended up seem­ing like the com­pa­nies were putting more effort into get­ting more money from me than actu­ally putting it to use.  Now, I just sup­port causes that I have some con­nec­tion to (like the British Surf­ing Museum).  It’s one of the best col­lec­tions of surf his­tory I’ve ever seen and Peter Robin­son, it’s cura­tor, is in the process of find­ing it a per­ma­nent loca­tion so I try and help where I can.

What are you most grate­ful for?
Luck.  You can be the smartest, most intel­li­gent per­son in the world, but if you have bad luck, you really won’t have much at all.  I’ve been really lucky over the years and I’m very grate­ful for it.

What’s next for Keiron Lewis?
I’ve just moved to Syd­ney with my wife and cur­rently pulling the pieces together to do a group show over here.  The plan is just to just get bet­ter at every­thing— bet­ter surfer, bet­ter hus­band, bet­ter artist.

Find out more about Keiron Lewis here.