Riding with the wild surf

When he was just 8 or 9 years old, Newport Beach resident Rick Rietveld used to sit and paint or draw beside his mother as she painted. It was during these formative childhood years that he decided he wanted to be an artist.

Encouraged and inspired by his mother, he enrolled in art classes as a teenager and was an illustration major as an adult. All the while he was surfing, a passion he discovered when he was about 14 years old.

Rietveld’s work is now on display at a new Corona del Mar art gallery, McKibben Studios. The musings for his work are his love for surfing and for surrealists such as Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. His work appears to be three dimensional, and has images of the ocean and waves, and hidden messages for surfers. “A Last Judgment,” one of his original pieces being shown at the gallery, exemplifies this. The painting has one surfer about to take off on a monstrous wave, and another left by the wayside, a horrified look on his face as he’s ready to go backward over the wave.

“It’s kind of sick humor , but that’s something I experienced in surfing…. That’s what I try to do, paint surf from a surfer’s point of view, so a lot of those are hidden,” he said. “If you’re a surfer there are certain things you’d understand in my art that others may not see and that’s what’s fun about it — there’s an element of discovery in it.”

Gallery owner Steve McKibben sold his business and opened the gallery as an homage to surf art. His previous experience was heavily influenced by the surf industry, having printed for the top surf companies throughout the years.

“I decided I still had a tremendous passion for art and the surf industry was such a big part of the McKibben family for the past 30 years,” McKibben said.

McKibben worked with Rietveld during his tenure as a printer and saw Rietveld’s work throughout the years. When he decided to open the gallery, he approached Rietveld about representing him and getting the art into galleries, including his own.

“He set the direction for surf art for the past 20 years,” said McKibben, who owned a screen printing business for more than 25 years.

Rietveld, always an artist, worked his way through the surf industry after finishing art school, working as a freelance artist for surf companies, co-founding Maui and Sons, and starting his own surfwear line. Rietveld has designed T-shirts all over the place, including for Quiksilver’s Eddie Aikau Memorial Big Wave Contest. His artwork on Los Angeles billboards won one of advertising’s prestigious OBIE awards in 1988.

He’s a heavy hitter, and he’s not the only one at the gallery. Greg Noll, surfboard shaper and a pioneer of big-wave surfing, has pieces he made with his son Jed Noll, who’s now a prominent shaper in the area. Noll is also featured in some of the other artists’ paintings in the signature striped shorts he was known for wearing when he surfed.

Other big-name surf artists Bill Ogden and Drew Brophy are also featured in the gallery. Brophy was one of the first to create fine art on a surfboard, and some call Ogden one of the most influential surf artists around, including to Rietveld.

“Bill has influenced just about every surf artist,” McKibben said. “He’s a philosopher and is extremely intelligent.”

Newport Beach resident Greg LaRock, who has worked as a graphic designer for years, recently jump-started his fine art career. He discovered landscape painting and rode with it, painting everything from Laguna Canyon, where he was Thursday afternoon, to scenes from the Hawaiian Island of Lanai, which is the setting of one of his favorite pieces at the gallery. His work is more of a realistic interpretation of his surroundings than Rietveld’s, but his drive is always to be able to tell the landscape’s story.

“It’s trying to get the feeling of the atmosphere, of the life of the time of the day and the feeling of the scene,” LaRock said. “If you can pull that off and it looks believable, but really loose and really painterly, that’s the goal and it’s not easy to do, but I love to try and pursue it.”

McKibben saw the inspiration in LaRock’s paintings and asked him to be part of the gallery’s repertoire after seeing his work at an art show in Corona del Mar. LaRock grew up in Huntington Beach and made his way south to Newport — something that has inspired his work, but doesn’t limit it.

“I’ve lived at the beach my whole life and I’ve always loved the beach and I am drawn to it,” he said. “But I look for a painting in the landscape, whether it’s in the middle of an urban city or out on the beach.”

Almost all the pieces are for sale, including sketches, which McKibben wanted to make available to the art lover who may not be able to afford artwork that costs thousands of dollars. Some of the pieces are fine art giclee (pronounced zhee-KLAY) reproductions, but there are numerous originals from all the artists. Prices range from $450 to $35,000, which is the price of Greg Noll’s “Portal,” a swiveling surfboard carved from a single piece of myrtle wood. The other featured artists are Phil Roberts, Norm Daniels and sculptors Annemarie Hall and Regina Hurley.

McKibben will hold the grand opening for the gallery at 3100 E. Coast Highway on Nov. 11. For more information go to https://www.McKibbenStudios.com or call (949) 287-0130.