We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nathan Gibbs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nathan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

In general, I learned my skills on my own. As a self taught artist, I acquired most of my abilities through trial and error. I did get some tips and training in woodworking from my grandfather, and a few simple painting technique and mixing skills from a friend who had a masters in fine art painting, that got me a little bit of a jump. Knowing what I know now back then I wish there had been countless YouTube videos for free available that could’ve sped up some of the process of learning to paint. Up-and-coming artist nowadays need only to look towards the Internet to accelerate their training. The skills I think that were most essential for learning my craft was an open mind and the ability to not care if a project turned out horrible or not. This allowed me to continue to push through times when many people might’ve given up. The biggest obstacles for preventing someone from learning more in my experience is simply time. How many hours of the day do you want to spend towards learning your craft. There’s the famous 10,000 hours model and I do believe in that that early in your career, putting in more time than not pays off in the long run.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was born in Washington State on the Kitsap Peninsula, and raised from 13 on, in North East Florida where I picked up surfing. Since 1999 I’ve lived and worked on my art career in South Orange County, CA. I have created art work internationally in Fiji, Bora Bora, Moorea, Costa Rica, Mexico, Hawaii and Australia and have shown work in over 6 countries. My has exhibited and has collectors in Florida, Washington, Oregon, New York, Hawaii, many other states, South America, Ireland, Sweden and of course California. I’ve been in over 80 gallery exhibits, shows, fairs, and have been featured in 29 web and print publications. Ive created over 400 pieces of art, much of it environmentally based. Self taught, I am influenced by Pollock, Van Gough, Cezanne, and others. In addition I wrote and illustrated the acclaimed environmentally conscious story and art book, The Betrayal of Man. I was awarded the 2007 1st Annual Earth Day: “GAIA” Environmental Award for my constant efforts in providing philanthropic support to water related charities. To date my contributions through my art to the Surfrider Foundation, Surfers Healing, Surf Aid international and various other charities have raised over $37,000..

Taking my paintings to a deeper level, I invoke participation from the viewer with a visual, emotional, and cognitive experience.

Many pieces attempt to do more than just paint a beautiful wave, or a pretty sunset. It is about a memory, issue or environmental message.

My art revolves around, transcends and invokes a sense of wonder within an ocean-nurtured lifestyle. Through the exploration of water landscapes, peoples faces and rural images, I free the boundaries of their realistic attributes. I open the dream-like qualities of moments revisited, thoughts recognized, and landscapes explored.

There are many ways that I portray a subject, muted themes, political sarcasm, and disguised messages, developed through the application of painting, chemical, and textual techniques. Through the use of acrylic on panel I loosely apply the paint trying only to control the content, leaving the nature created waves of wood grain often exposed. The surf art, found object and hardware sculptures I create openly reinvent the energy of ocean waves and the way they move, form and break. Much of my work reveals the relationships between energy, water, life and emotion and how those create and destroy our natural world, specifically the ocean. Using art to document the environmental struggles of the times, the works relay a message. Through surrealistic symbolism, Byzantine inspired iconography, and hidden images, I invoke participation from the viewer with a visual, emotional, and cognitive experience.

One thing that sets me apart from many other artists is that I guarantee the value of my work for life. So when a collector purchases my work safe for $2000 they are in essence investing that $2000 in my current future collection. If it anytime the collector decides, they want to try something else from my collection or they see something new and exciting that appeals to the more simply return the piece to me and whatever they originally paid, they have that credit towards anything else in my collection. I believe that this shows confidence in my abilities, and allows the collector to know that I believe in my work, and then it’ll stand the test time. It also allows newer collectors, who may be somewhat hesitant on spending thousands of dollars for an original piece of art somewhat a piece of mind knowing that if for some reason it doesn’t work out they always have a way of trying something new and different. my collectors love that I’m constantly shifting and changing and amalgamating my styles and coming up with new collections. Collectors can have four pieces of my art on the wall and to a non-knowing viewer it can seem like they’re from four different artists. And I think that’s something special that a lot of artists who stick with the same genre, theme or style can’t provide their collectors

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

One of my main goals and missions when I create my work in about 75% of my pieces, I try and tell some sort of an environmental story lesson or bit of information to educate the public. Many times they are subtle, or avert, but I want someone to be able to look at a piece of my artwork and enjoy it for its beauty, but also to understand that there is a message behind it to where we can look at some thing, and know there is more to it than just the beautiful picture.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Well, when NFTs were first coming out, I was all on board. I was creating them doing my best to sell them and I thought it was going to be the next big gold Rushin artwork. Unfortunately, at least, in my case it was a very difficult and somewhat pointless process. The majority of people who collect my style of art were necessarily the people who were looking to have an NFT of it. I think the concept of what an NFT can do with contracts, etc. is it interesting one that will be useful in the future. But as everyone knows what the recent crash in the value of all of the famous“ NFT collections, it was sort of a pyramid scheme going sideways. Even to this day, I still get spam messages in my Instagram inbox about people wanting to buy my work as an NFT only to turn out that they are clearly scammers trying to get people to transfer money into wallets and lose cryptocurrency. It’s an unfortunate situation because I like that in the art world things have the ability to change and innovate, but I don’t think this was one of them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://NathanGibbsArt.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/nathangibbsart
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/nathangibbsart
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/surfartist
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@nate4surf?si=qj0e5d-Wxs4V2XKZ

Image Credits
Rick Bickford