Wayne Roten

I was born in Los Angeles in the early 50's. My father is a jazz musician and my mother was an opera singer, so from the moment I was brought home from the hospital, all I heard was music all day long, which I think led me into becoming a creative person. We moved to Woodland Hills, California around 1959. The neighborhood I moved into already had an infamous crew of surfers, who rode balsawood boards. I purchased a Dale-Velzey balsa board that almost been broken in half in the Islands. The boys had reshaped it down to 7'11" and pigmented it red. It looked like something you would buy at Toys r Us, however, I learned to surf on it.

It was around this time that I really got interested in art, basically due through reading Rick Grifffen's comics and John Severson's "beatnik" style of painting. At first I tried to copy everything they did, but as I began to study Art at Taft High School, I became enthralled with the masters, such as Dali, H.R. Geiger (of Alien fame) Van Gogh and Warhol and began to develop my own style. I continued my art studies at Cal State and won a few awards for "Most Original" etc.



Upon graduating, I found there was very little interest in surrealistic
artist and lost faith, not only in myself, but the art world in general. In addition, I had a new family to raise and took on a job as a private investigator, which I still do today, only because it pays well. I opened my own PI agency in 1989 after securing my license. But Art was never far from my heart.



I had an epiphany around 1991, when Surfer Magazine asked artists to send in a collage using clippings cut from their magazine. I had forgotten all about it, when one night I was at a local market thumbing through the latest Surfer and saw that I had placed 4th. Considering that thousands of talented surfer/artists had entered, it made me realize that I was good enough to be in their company. Shortly thereafter, I began to whip out acrylic "Surf Paintings" every two weeks until I had a pretty good portfolio.




In the meantime, I had just purchased a computer and got in touch with John Severson, who was a boyhood hero of mine. He really encouraged me and told me to go for it. I opened up a small booth up near Santa Barbara and sold over $400.oo worth of paintings within two days. I then began to peddle my stuff on the Internet and received calls back from several surfwear manufacturers who were interested in my designs. Then the Surf Channel called and asked if they could do a segment on me, which should come out around the end of August 2000. In the meantime, through "word of mouth" I have sold dozens of prints, both through the Internet and from fellow surfers. I don't expect to rake in a fortune, but it's nice to have a little spending money. But most important to me is that Art is a universal language, just like music. It can inspire people and it can make them happy. If I can uplift one's spirit through my art, then like the law of cause and effect, it makes me happy too.