Biography

Stay away from surfing themes in your art, said the gallery people, because it won't be good for your career.  So, at first, David Lloyd avoided images of waves and beaches and became well known in the art world for his complex, vibrant, and enigmatic abstractions.  But the more he denied the impulse to explore the activity that has most colored his life, the stronger it became.  He began to create surf paintings quietly, on the side, with devotion.  Until recently, few people had seen them.

At 47, Lloyd has the impish look of an eighth grader.  Bearded and bespectacled, he prefers surf talk to anything else and can easily become animated.  A third-generation Angeleno, he grew up surfing the beaches of Santa Monica and Venice.  In 1969, his dad, a surfer and architect, joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Ghana.  Lloyd was pulled out of high school to go along.  It was a godsend for the kid who hated sitting at a school desk but thrived on hands-on learning.

In Africa, his family rented a home at the edge of the jungle.  Young David got a part-time job with a university herpetologist.  The two would go out into the bush to trap and collect poisonous snakes.  Dad had encouraged him to bring a board, so David was able to pioneer some virgin spots.  He discovered  small village that had a Trestles-like reef out front.  The whole community turned out to watch him on his first paddle-out at a spot where he may have been the first surfer.

  When he returned in 1971, the family moved to Carmel.  Lloyd began surfing spots like Moss Landing and Big Sur, getting waves with a few friends at spot largely undiscovered.  After some years, returned to Los Angeles to attend Cal Arts, the acclaimed school that was founded by Disney.  After graduation, he became immediately successful in the boiling 1980s art scene.  He was signed at the Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles, a prestigious art house that favored established artist over upstarts.  Then, at the height of the demand for his abstract work, he became disillusioned by the gallery scene, which suddenly seemed rigid and conservative.  He began to secretly make surf paintings.

...In creating the paintings, Lloyd mixed a variety of media ...including pastel, acrylic, leaves, dog hair, and any other debris cluttering the floor of the Culver City studio.  He is unwilling to define what and how he creates.  This may mean that yesterday's lunch could show up in some artwork.  This fooling-around approach resonates in the fertile chaos of his studio.  On one wall, a group of giclee prints recall retro-style surfing art.  On the opposite wall, complex shapes float through an eight-foot-tall abstraction.  A giant foam head is plastered over with photos of the subject's features to create a disquieting self-portrait.  Surfboards hang from the rafters, including one with the tunnel fin design, an exotic personal innovation.  Lloyd believes anyone who surfs should be involved in design and has a number of bizarre-looking boards to record his journey.  In the next room, the detritus of artistic experiments litters the floor.  Stacks of art books compete with surf magazines and three giant slobbery dogs guard the entrance.

Besides surfing and making art, Lloyd has taught painting at Art Center in Pasadena and the Brentwood Art Center.  His works are collected worldwide and can be found in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art.  Although his abstract works are sought after by collectors, he prefers the freedom to change, play, and explore as opposed to cranking out work for collectors.

What is next for Lloyd in the surfing world?  Maybe the Indian Ocean where perfect places still have not been found.  Lloyd admits, however, that to search endlessly is better than to find.  He knows he will never reach the end. But he dreams in possibilities, always asking, in the corners of our earth or the next solar system, what will the surf there be like?  He relished the longing for waves that may not even exist.   It is that longing that lights his imagination ablaze to paint the parade of moments and days from the fiery ocean.

an excerpt from A Parade of Days: The Art of David Lloyd by John Gunnin featured in The Surfer's Journal, volume thirteen, number one