A couple of days ago I found myself mixing paint on my left arm. I had a perfectly good palette, but I got so lost in the canvas in front of me that when I ran out of mixing-space, rather than stopping I continued to paint furiously, using my sleeve to blend swabs of colour. I paint in a grappling gi (super-comfy) that gets pretty spattered but never like this – the paint had seeped through, stained my skin and I was left holding my arm at an odd but convenient angle. Whilst I felt a little ridiculous, it was also one of the most intensely concentrated moments or minutes or hours (I couldn’t quite tell) I’ve had and I felt great for it. The resultant work had a sweet balance between what I envisaged and a bit of surprise technique. At Glyph we try to be aware of these serendipities but trying to verbalise this kind of thing is hard.

It’s always great when you go looking for something and it finds you first. That same day, I went home, a little woozy from my turpentine wash down, thinking about my rather unusual time in the studio. I turned on the TV and found Shaun Tomson, talking about exactly what I had experienced. He was being interviewed on “Bustin’ Down the Door”, a documentary on the groundbreaking work he and his contemporaries did to establish surfing as a professional sport. For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Shaun and a group of South Africans and Australians transformed surfing from a recreation into an internationally recognised sport. The documentary is brilliant, but what really got me hooked was Shaun describing his uberstanding of the phrase “keep the stoke”. The ‘stoke’, according to the way Shaun described it, seems to be more than the surfers ‘zone’. From what I can tell it covers the instinct for knowing within a millisecond that you’ve caught a wave, the exhilaration of catching it and the itch you are left with to do it all over again, knowing that there is a perfect wave out there. Maybe I read too much into it, but the way Shaun Tomson described this state was like ocean chi!

I know what it feels like. I may not look as cool as a surfer punching through a barrel, but damn, when I find my stoke it feels that good. It is the mark of spontaneous, natural and uninhibited work. It is when you are most yourself; most together, but also most outwardly receptive. I have never surfed, but I feel like I get Shaun Tomson in this regard.

I have to ask why artists, illustrators and creative types in general haven’t found a name, let alone proliferated their own brand of stoke. Shaun Tomson has expanded this concept into the Surfers Code, a set of ethics and a life philosophy that honours the fraternity and the environment which supports what he calls the “sport of kings”. He has expanded this ethos into a book, which I have recently ordered.

So much of the work that goes into art is focused on a concept or idea that I sometimes wonder if we have exchanged intellect for intuition. We seem to labour over the cleverness of works that are smart for smart-sake instead of perceptively creating art for arts-sake. That’s not to say I am advocating old-school traditionalist work or that I only recognise painting and sculpture, but when your objective is creating to be clever instead of being clever with your creativity you lose something.

Damien Hirst, famous for briefing other artists over the phone on how to create *his* work, says this of briefing other artists to execute his “spot” pictures: “I couldn’t be fucking arsed doing it”. This is ironic, when you consider that his recent attempt at exhibiting his own paintings was met with damning reviews. Still, no one seemed to link his attitude to his work. It makes you want to say to the likes of Hirst: If painting means so little to you why would you expect it to mean any more to anyone else? Hirst has also said “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it”. Can you imagine how long surfing as a pro sport would last if surfers turned around and said “I really can’t wait to get so famous that I can surf badly and get paid for it?”.

Being the pioneer of the sport, Tomson was asked if surfing has been or ever will be over-commercialised. He maintains that pro-surfers, like him, started out with nothing but the love of riding waves – their primary objective being to become good enough at surfing that they could make a living out of it. Their financial drive existed purely to enable them to do what they loved. That hasn’t changed. I think it is the same for a lot of artists and creatives. The trick is to love it not lose it. Today Shaun Tomson doesn’t get paid to surf, but between running a clothing company, serving several charities and environmental groups and being a motivational speaker, he will still surf for up to eight hours at a stretch.

One of the lines in the surfers code is “I will pass my stoke on to a non-surfer”. I think it’s sad that surfers have a code that says: help the guy who brought the longboard just to look the part and is now drowning at the backline, but artists have never tried to help the affected concept artist who’s selling fart-in-a jar or the (sm)art director who has to tell young designers what to do to hide his own ineptitude. And how many times do we hear people saying “I can only draw stick men” or “it must be nice to have that talent”, without an artist replying “but you can create art too!” Not all creative ability comes naturally, but once attained it feels like the most natural thing in the world – if only we, as artists, can help identify it and share it.

So I will leave you with two words we came up with: use em’, change em’, or come up with your own. For us it’s about phluke-ups and phlow: it starts with that serendipitous mistake, the Phluke that somehow reveals the picture you had in your mind, unravelling all the tension in your hand and letting you naturally phlow through the task. Get lost in what you are doing, but when you come back, be proud of the half-crazed, half-calm state you were in and share that with someone else.

Don’t be afraid to Phluke it up and let it phlow!

I have posted links to the code below along with links to Shaun Tomson – should you want to buy his book or if, like me, you are suddenly overcome with the urge to take up surfing!

http://www.solitudeclothing.com/surfcode/index.html

http://www.surfrider.org/

http://www.solitudeclothing.com/philosophy/index.html

http://www.bustindownthedoor.com/

http://www.surferscode.com/