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My name is Steve. I surf and paint. Live to surf, surf to paint, paint to surf. As as
kid I was 20 years old, living in Australia, and I did whatever it took to buy another
bar of wax. I was painting boards and decals, and this is kinda how my decals were. They
were colored pencil and india ink on rice paper, and we’d glass them on the board.
A friend of mine sent me some canvases from the mainland and I though I’d just paint
a big decal. Somebody wanted to buy one, so I sold it for 30 bucks and went and bought
another canvas, I was so stoked. I’d say one of the things that shaped my life the
most was living in villages 1.5 or 2 degrees off the equator of Papua New Guinea with a
friend of mine surfing. These characters are in the New Guinea vibe with their loin clothes
on, but of course they have modern thrusters and swallow tails and squash tails, but no
ones’s around. These days the kids start off from the beginning, their parents support
them. When I started surfing - if you were a surfer you were a bum. There was little
hope for you in society. Kids get support from their parents, it’s like little league.
You’ve got soccer moms on the beach at the surf contests yelling and screaming. They’re
ripping, so I”m inspired by those guys - the way they surf has inspired me, and I think
I put the top surfers in the world on my paintings, and I pretend it’s me, throw some long green
hair and tattoos on a tiny little surfboard and make it look nostalgic. 20 years people
will look back and say remember when? Remember when we just got on a board and sailed to
a perfect surf spot? Most of my paintings are in Kapaa, the Aloha Images art gallery
in Kapaa across the street from Mermaid’s. There’s another gallery in the Dragon Building
that has some of my larger pieces in there. At Poipu Fine Art. There’s paintings in
California, Australia, France, and Japan has a bunch. On October 9th at Kilohana, there
is going to be a benefit to help get some jet skis for lifeguards, so I’ll do a live
painting during a live music set and it will be auctioned off that night for the benefit.
On October 22 I’m going to put on a show and exhibition in Kapaa at the Aloha Images
Gallery in the Dragon Building. You can find me online at www.stevenvaliere.com, check
it out. Thank you very much. If I had the money and I had an art collector, I would
buy all of these paintings.