Intro by Jake Howard Interview by Mike Latronic
Sit with Drew Brophy in the lineup at the San Clemente Pier and he’ll probably tell you he’s lucky to be alive. One time he peeled his scalp right off his skull on a reef in Tahiti, but that wasn’t anything compared to the months he spent in a coma battling covid and fighting for his life. But “luck” probably isn’t the right word. Brophy’s resilience, ability to overcome adversity, and defy the odds is who he is.
Drew Brophy is one of the most influential surfboard artists in modern history. His art has reflected the imagination and spirit of surf stoke for the past three generations. He died, by the way, momentarily, but then thank goodness, he came back.
Coming up as a surf-stoked kid in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in the ‘80s presented a myriad of challenges, especially for a creative kid like Drew Brophy. A naturally talented artist with a penchant for powerful surf, by the time he was out of school the writing was scribbled on the wall.
“I had to get out,” explained Drew. “It was a dead end for me.”
Growing up competing on the East Coast during the days of Kelly Slater’s grommet hood, Drew was determined to keep surfing even if he didn’t quite have the abundance of talent his Florida neighbor did. After a stint painting boards in Myrtle Beach in the early ‘90s a desperate Drew bought a one-way ticket to Hawai’i and never returned.
“I went to the North Shore to paint boards and surf Pipeline. That was the dream, but like anything, I guess, that wasn’t the reality,” said Drew, “I got some work painting boards, mostly airbrushing because nobody was really using the POSCA paint pens. I got to a point where I was painting the top guys’ boards. Some big-name guy would come in, explain what he wanted, and I’d paint his board, but getting paid was a different story. And I’d be out at Pipeline with all these guys and they treated me like shit.”
It didn’t take long for disenchantment to settle in. Then Drew hit the bottom at Pipe. Smashing his face and body on the reef, he was a broken young man. Without any money or direction, and mounting medical bills, Drew sought a scenery change. He linked up with an old friend from Myrtle Beach who’d moved to San Clemente.
“I rented his garage and that’s where I lived when I first moved to California. I met Matt [Biolos] and we hit it off right away,” said Drew. “This would have been around ’95 or ’96.”
Matt and Mike Reola were on the cusp of launching …Lost Surfboards. Drew quickly delivered the irreverent aesthetic touch. Having mastered the art of airbrushing surfboards in the factories on the North Shore, he had also been honing his skills with Japanese POSCA brand paint pens—a medium which had been largely ignored by surfboard artists.
“Airbrushing is more technical, I knew that these pens would allow for a lot more freedom and creativity. I knew there was opportunity there,” said Drew. “This was still the time when a lot of guys were on all white surfboards and black wetsuits. We started putting color and fun into the art. We’d do anything we wanted on a board. There weren’t any rules. If somebody came in and said they wanted a picture of a goat with his eyeballs falling out riding a rocket ship, we’d do that. And I’d sign the board, nobody was really doing that back then either. The artists weren’t getting any recognition.”
At this point in the evolution of surfing the Momentum Generation lorded over everyone. Kelly, Shane Dorian, Rob Machado, Ross Williams and company defined “cool.” There was also an air of elitism in the blossoming surf industry.
“We were the misfits,” said Drew flatly. “We were the underbelly, the guys that were outcasts, and we accepted a lot of different people into what we were doing. We were trying to figure out how to make all [of] this work, so we could still have fun and surf every day. The competitive aspect had become very serious. We didn’t want to sacrifice what we thought surfing was really all about. We wanted to keep things loose. Mike was making these videos with Strider, Shea and Cory Lopez, Wardo and everyone, so that was part of it. Matt’s boards were more progressive. And then I’d paint them.”
As business started to build at …Lost, Drew and Matt hit the road together. Both dedicated to their craft, they jumped on the trade show circuit and started grinding.
“There were other artists contributing at the time, but I’d go with Matt to these shows because I could paint 100 or 200 boards over the course of a weekend,” said Drew.
“Things took off. Within a year I started making good money. We all did,” continued Drew. “I’d never had any money, so I didn’t really know how to spend it once I had it. I bought a car and a house with the money I made from painting surfboards.”
Drew still lives in that same house with his wife.
“Matt worked so hard, and I was right there with him. I don’t think it would have worked if he’d slacked off, but then- that’s not Matt,” added Drew.
The good times kept rolling for the next few years. …Lost embraced its role as the home for misfits, and subsequently, surfers the world over gobbled up what they were selling.
“We were going everywhere, shaping and painting and surfing. We had a lot of fun during that time,” continued Drew. “It was like the dream had come true for us.”
In the early 2000s …Lost made the decision to expand and start producing a clothing line. Drew’s art was to figure prominently.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done is when I went in to see Matt in his shaping bay and tell him I was out,” said Drew. “I was offered a lot of money, but I was going to have to be in Irvine in an office working. I couldn’t do it. I still wanted to surf every day, enjoy my family and do my art. I didn’t want to have that corporate structure over me, so I walked away.”
To his credit, Drew has since blazed his own trail every step of the way. In the ensuing years he launched Drew Brophy Designs, and with the support of his wife, Maria, they built a remarkably successful art business. They do commission work with brands big and small, but one of their masterstrokes was figuring out the licensing game. Drew’s art has appeared everywhere from drug store boogie boards to coffee mugs, mailboxes and camper vans.
With a new lease on life, Brophy is healthy, happy, surfs on the daily and continues to create surfy, psychedelic masterpieces like he’s always done.
Tell us a bit of your evolution with doing this amazing art on surfboards?
I painted surfboards on the East Coast, so a lot of people don’t realize my route. I was working for Kelly Richards at Perfection Surfboards and there I got introduced to a lot of great board makers and guys like Regis Jupinko from Quiet Flight. I was airbrushing and hand painting boards too. Those were like the first POSCA Pen paintings. There wasn’t enough work there, so you couldn’t make a career out of it so I decided to go to Hawai’i. I ended up on the North Shore and went right to work at Pro Glass at Bill Barnfield’s shop. At the time Bill had assembled probably the greatest group of people going through there. Al Merrick’s boards were going through there. Rusty Preisendörfer, Michael Byrne and others. It was just extraordinary to see Dick Brewer and Gerry Lopez coming through daily and Bill, you know, he was a real stickler for perfection. I was from nowhere, South Carolina, and then ended up in the epicenter of surfing painting boards for guys like Tom Curren and Tom Carroll.
Those were my idols so it was surreal. I was just kind of a factory worker at that point, behind the scenes, both surfing Pipeline and meeting everybody. I kind of kept to myself but I made all my connections with the guys that actually build boards and the serious surfers.
The art you create on surfboards is colorful, beautiful, intricate and vibrant, but what happens when they break? It’s bad enough to break a favorite stick but then with your art it must be worse! You must hear some real horror stories from your clients.
I’ve had so many. One time, Mason Ho had a board just done. I was staying at Rocky Point and he showed up at like 11 at night begging me to paint this gun. He was gonna surf Sunset the next day and it was supposed to be pretty good. So I’m like okay, “What do you want?” And he’s like, “Oh, I’d love to get a dragon.” And I’m like “A dragon!?” That was kind of late at night for that but he hung out and we sat there and painted it and he was all stoked. And so we created this badass board and he was just so stoked. He goes, “All right, man, I’m gonna get the shot tomorrow!” And he left. The waves were good the next day and I didn’t hear from him. I saw him eventually and he was ducking down. I’m like, “What happened?” He tells me, “I pulled into the barrel and I got squashed.” His board broke on the first wave. You know, I’ve heard that story so many times. It’s okay. You go have these great rides, whether it was just one or a lot. And then you hang that board up and you just remember all the great rides you had on it.
What kind of artwork was mostly requested?
It’s usually a reflection of their personality. Surfers are such unique characters. Christian Fletcher back in the day: everything about him is punk rock. Tom Curren had the plain black bands on his boards, but that was him, that clean look. It’s a match to the personality.
You were really influential to the whole evolution of modern surfboard art. Was that intentional?
That whole movement was really about inspiring more people to be creative on their boards. Fast forward to today and that’s exactly what’s happened.
How about your relationship with surfing?
I just think we’re so fortunate. It’s an experience and endeavor that we can do for our whole lives. If you keep your body strong and there’s no reason why you can’t be surfing forever. And that’s a very unique experience.
When it comes to life experience you have a unique perspective. Can you try to summarize what happened to you with your life and death medical story?
You know there’s something about being immersed in nature and then the love for surfing, I just felt like I was so clued in, and the art really was a reflection of what I was seeing and experiencing through surfing and being in nature. I kind of feel like my senses were a little stronger than most people. Then I had this experience of getting covid and being told I was gonna die. I was one of those people that was told that they moved me into a room with a window so I could say goodbye to my family. Not many people have had that experience [to go through].
At that moment I wasn’t afraid. I told my wife I got this. Don’t let ’em turn the machines off. They put me to sleep so I could die and I wouldn’t suffer, but I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. You know when everything is taken from you, you have this different experience of getting it back and how lucky we are to have every experience. Even this amazing body that you’ve been given that so many of us don’t take care of. To be able to move [it] and how waves work and that just the fact that a human can ride a wave. It seems extraordinary that we can paddle and catch it, match its speed in real time, jump up as it curls down and that we can navigate that and do it and become one with nature or the energy that all that is. Having been told I was going to perish, [I was] in a coma for a month, paralyzed for 3 and a half months and then rehab for about a year and a half. And to have died and come back, you really see that in this place that you go on the other side, that you’re literally part of everything. It’s profound. To come back from that and then be back in this body and be back winning each movement and breath and something as simple as a sip of water after not having a sip of water for four and a half months, you become extremely grateful for everything. It’s just such a unique experience that I’m still processing it.
I’m 52, I feel like I’m getting back on track and I want to be better than I was and you can be if you take care of this body and build it and put the time in. That goes for the same with the art. The art’s just a reflection of your experience and you’re desperately trying to translate to other people what that experience is.
Technically, what are you using to create your art?
I started using Uni POSCA pens in the late eighties. And at the time they were these acrylic pens that were created for kindergarten children in Japan. There were a few guys on the North Shore that were using ’em for pin lines.
Somehow I heard about this in South Carolina and I told a friend of my father’s who worked in Japan and went there once a month. He bought me a bunch of POSCA pens and I started using ’em.
I pitched it to everybody. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I thought they were gonna jump on it, but they just kind of looked at me like I was nuts. It wasn’t until I came here [San Clemente] for the summer and started working with Matt Biolos and he was already doing some boards himself. The POSCA pens allowed me to be more creative and I was off to the races. I think that first summer I did so well financially I decided to stay here and not go back to Hawai’i.
It just took off like a skyrocket once we got it past the gatekeepers of the surf shops. Ultimately it was the public, the people, who decided: the surfers that decided they liked it. It took me a good five or six years to get it past all the industry gatekeepers and once the public saw it took off. It was amazing.
When did you first start getting into actually drawing waves?
When I was younger I was heavily inspired by album covers. I had four older brothers and sisters so they, you know, were listening to everything from Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Rolling Stones and KISS and you get these crazy album covers. And then Surfer Magazine for sure and everybody from Rick Griffin to Bill Ogden, John Seaverson and Jim Evans, even things from Southern California hot rod culture like Ed Roth and Von Dutch. I gravitated towards those things.
So who are some of the guys today that are regularly getting your artwork?
I don’t do that many boards for people these days because my business now has grown so much bigger. The only reason I do boards now is ’cause I never wanna forget where I came from. I was literally painting boards at Pipeline for anybody that would have me, so I could go buy a sandwich at Kammie’s Market. I just wanted to make enough money to eat. To go from that to today is pretty extraordinary. But, you know, in those early days it was really just trying to do something that I was good at and living my best life, to be happy and surfing— [that] and art were the only two things I was good at.
I think that’s a big lesson also for people to strive to be happy, not necessarily just to make money. People might think surfing and art is cool, but, you know, I kind of looked at it like I got these two bad cards dealt to me. Like how am I gonna make this work financially? I played my cards the best way I could. You might say it was a great hand, depending on how you play it. Pretty much straight flush, dude. I can say that now ’cause thankfully I made it work.
You basically died, fought through rehab and returned to your family, life and surfing. You mentioned your love of surfing was actually part of that fight.
It’s addicting. It’s like riding the heartbeat of the planet, especially the bigger the waves. Let’s face it, surfers get to go to some of the most beautiful places on the planet. That’s where all the inspiration comes from, the waves, the sun. I lived the dream just like everybody else. I didn’t become a pro surfer but I surfed all the best waves in the world and I was still part of the story. I think whether you’re a writer or artist or a photographer or a coach there are so many different aspects of surfing that you can participate in. The kids need to know that.
As surfers we’ve experienced something that not many people are capable of understanding. You have those experiences and you want more. I think I’m still vibrating from some of the waves.
I do surfboard art because that’s where I started. But all the other art pays the bills. I mean, I’ve done things from Google, 3M and IBM. I’ve worked for all the surf companies over the years and that’s kind of a cool feeling. I think what’s neat about art is that the best paintings are yet to come, but I gotta live to keep surfing and traveling and adventuring to get that inspiration to feed it.
Well Drew, we are sure glad you are still here to continue inspiring people!