We caught up with San Clemente bred, surfer/artist extraordinaire Mike Losness fresh back from Bali and on his way up to the annual scrotum shrinker, O’Neill’s Cold Water Classic. ~Click Read More for photos and the full interview.
We caught up with San Clemente bred, surfer/artist extraordinaire Mike Losness fresh back from Bali and on his way up to the annual scrotum shrinker, O’Neill’s Cold Water Classic. The high flying goofy footer and good natured, affable Losness has recently created his own signature boardshort for Body Glove’s VAPOR series with his trademarked ‘Losfish,’ a center-piece for much of his art. The project exemplifies much of what makes Losness tick, surfing and art. “It was really fun to be a part of the making of the boardshort and to be able to merge my art with my surfing,” said Losness. In the art of surfing when waves become canvases, Losness aggressive aerials dot runs like a manic Pollock, while in the studio Losness’ paintings seem to be strokes of a free session in a visual sea of color and form.
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Photos by Chris Straley
From Bali to The Cold Water Classic with no time in between, different worlds huh? Yeah, I’m just a little bit nervous because I haven’t put a full suit on in like three months and the water is meant to be 52 up here. And I was just in Bali for a month, so I’ve only been wearing board shorts for the past 4 weeks. I’m tripping out a bit, it’s gonna be freezing.
Is there anything you’re looking out for competition- wise? To be honest I’m not really a super competitive person all the time, and lately I’ve just been not really feeling the contests anyway. I’m in the car with two friends right now, and we’re more just going to hang out and have fun for the week and surf. The contest is second to me right now, so I’m not really worried about losing or winning or anything. I’m just having fun.
That’s what it’s all about. So how was Bali? It was good. At the start of the trip I was coming off an ankle injury, so I didn’t surf much. My girlfriend does an import business where she has purses made and buys jewelry. She brings them back to California and sells it all, so the first week I was hanging out with her a lot and it was cool because I was going to all these shops where they make all these bags out of snakeskin and leather and all these different things. I was blown away. I was like ‘whoa these things are pretty rad.’ So it was cool to see a different side of Bali that I hadn’t seen yet. I went and got a suit made, my second suit ever. I was pretty psyched on that. Then we got a lot of really good waves after that first week. There were a couple big swells that hit by Padang. There was a sick left that was breaking for a couple days, then the surf got crappy for a week, but the last week was really fun. There are so many waves to surf in Bali. It’s one of my favorite places in the world, I love being there. This was my third time going this year.
What do you do when there are no waves? There’s so much to do. There’s an art district where all these artists live and make sick art, or you could go to this sick water park they have there. They have a bungee jump, and sometimes we just go chill at the Hard Rock Hotel. You could go shopping for days. If you wanna just go shopping and have things made, like I mentioned before, you can get a suit made, get snakeskin boots made, get Bali T-shirts. You can get whatever you want there, they have the coolest shopping.
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Photos by Chris Straley - Artwork by Mike Losness
So were you working on any specific surfing related projects out there? Taylor Steele lives in Bali now, and so every time I go to Bali I’m always filming with him for his next video. I was doing that, and then there’s a couple photographers that live there who work at Surfer and Surfing magazine. It’s pretty much a no-brainer to go there because there’s people that film for videos and then there’s photographers that work for magazines, so you can pretty much always get hooked up and get work done there.
What’s the new Taylor Steele film called or does it have a name yet? I don’t think it has a name. I know for a while they had some thing where you could write in to Surfing Magazine and create your own name, so maybe they’re going to do that. It’s coming out July 1st, I just found that out. They got a bunch of good footage of a lot of new guys: Jordy Smith, Yaden Nichols, Clay Marzo and a lot of younger guys that are gonna be in it. It should be really sick.
So tell me a little bit about your artwork, how does surfing influence it? I don’t really know if surfing is the thing that influences me. I think it’s more of the traveling. Surfing takes me to all these crazy weird places, and I feel like I’ve seen the whole world. Once you’ve experienced a lot and you see what’s out there, it kinda opens your mind to different things. Some of my art is inspired by different travels I’ve done or is related to the traveling side of the surfing. Also, all my art is done with fiberglass and resin, so it’s the same stuff surfboards are made out of obviously. It’s kinda hard to tell in pictures, but when you see it in real life it looks cooler. It’s real textury, the only way I could describe it is it’s like ding-repair art.
Tell me about some of the new paintings you’ve been working on. The last painting that I did was for this lady from Arizona. She wrote me and wanted me to do a painting of a Jellyfish. A lot of the art I like to do is about animals, like animal faces and stuff like that. I’ve never even thought of doing a Jellyfish, but I’m doing this one for her that’s almost done. It’s pretty cool, I’m into it. Also I did a painting of a Zebra that’s pretty sick and one of a whale, those are the last three paintings I’ve done.
What’s the most memorable experience or travel that influenced one of your paintings? I did a piece like a year ago after one of my trips to Bali and named it Bali Dancer. It’s like an Asian style painting of a person’s face. That one’s really cool because I really like going to Bali. I don’t have it anymore though. I gave it to a friend.
So you can’t really do prints of resin artwork, do you do any prints at all? I haven’t yet, but I’ll be looking into it soon because I really like some of them and once I get rid of the original, I don’t have any way of having it anymore. It would be nice to have a print to have forever. I could offer that art to more people instead of just one person getting the painting.
Where do you see yourself and your artwork 10 years from now? I don’t really know. I don’t try to worry too much about what’s going to happen with my surfing and art and what I’m going to be doing in the next 10 years. I know for a fact that I’ll still be doing the art because I love doing it. It would be cool if all of a sudden my paintings got real popular and there was a high demand for them. I’d be stoked because I’d definitely enjoy that kind of a lifestyle. If I could just paint for a living that would be insane, but to be honest, I don’t see that happening for me because it’s more of a hobby to me now than a job. Maybe in the next 10 years it might turn into something else. I don’t really know.
Gotcha, so when and how did you get started painting? I started painting when I was around 12 years old, or like middle school age. My grandma was a painter and every time I went to my grandparents house, that was 6 hours away, I’d be stuck there with nothing to do, but I loved painting. She taught me a lot of techniques and cool stuff. That’s pretty much how and when I started. Then I kinda stopped for a while when I was in high school. Senior year I took an art class and it sparked my interest again. Since I did my first fiberglass and resin painting, I’ve gotten super into it again. Pretty much all the art I’ve done the past two and a half years is done with the fiberglass and resin.
So I heard you’re super into music also, do you play any instruments? I play the guitar, but I’m definitely not ripping or anything like that.
What kind of guitar do you have? My favorite guitar is my dad’s guitar from when he was in college. It’s a Guild, one of the classic ones. The thing’s sick.
Do you know what year it is? I don’t know how old it is, but he bought it sometime in the late 70s. I love that guitar though. It has the best sound out of all the guitars I have.
They say that guitars get better with age, if they’re worth anything. Yeah, for sure.
How did the name Losfish come about? (Laughs) That’s a good story. When I was probably 16, I used to ride for Rip Curl, and I went on a bunch of surf trips all over Indo. I did one to the islands off of India and I was traveling with Chris Davidson and Nathan Hedge and all the guys that rode for Rip Curl back then. We were on one of those trips to those islands off India called the Andaman Islands, but we didn’t get that great of waves, so we were doing a lot of fishing. I was the grom on the trip and really wanted to catch all the fish because I was super psyched on fishing at that time anyways. When I was back home I was fishing with my dad and stuff. So, I was super stoked to be fishing there. Every time the reel would start spinning out, and we’d have a fish, I would always be the first one there and I was getting way too greedy. Every time I’d bring the fish in it was just a head, like a shark or some bigger fish would have eaten it or else I’d lose it. So Nathan Hedge started calling me “Lost Fish” because I was losing all the fish. That’s how that name started and it just kinda stuck when a bunch of my friends called me that. It became my nickname. Back then it was real cool because I really looked up to those guys. They were older than me, and I thought they were such good surfers. I was just stoked to be traveling with them and they made that name for me.
What do you think is important for an athlete or artist to know? I think that there are things that people do that are unique to themselves and can be really original, if they want them to be. It all can be really pure. You can’t really imitate how someone surfs and you can’t really imitate art from a personal period. It will live forever and music’s the same way. Everyone has a different voice and no one can be the same.
Obviously, there’s things that sell and people that do it from the heart, is there a different motive between the two? I think you can tell when people are doing something just because they like to do it, and when someone’s doing it because that’s what they have to do to make money. You can tell when someone’s just doing something for fun, like the people who just have a hobby. They play guitar for fun or paint in their garage when they’re bored or surf right before dark just to catch three waves. Those people are usually good at what they’re doing. ~
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