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Aaberg, Kemp

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Abellira, Reno

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academia and surfing

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advertising and surfing

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Anderson, Simon

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Beschen, Shane

California artist from Laguna Beach; best known to surfers for his splashy and mildly psychedelic work from 1969 to the mid-'70s. His "fantasy-based, Tolkien-like figures and dwellings," as art historian Bolton Colburn wrote, along with his "deep knowledge of the anatomy of waves, [combined] to form the ecstatic feeling one gets in the best of surf conditions."

Ogden was born (1943) in Los Angeles, the son of Oklahoma sharecroppers, moved to San Clemente after graduating high school, and began surfing at age 18. A self-taught artist, his cute Mad Magazine-inspired cartoons were first published in 

In 1967, Ogden became part of a Laguna Beach scene congregating around the Mystic Arts World head shop, which in turn led him to become the informal house artist for the LSD-distributing Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and in 1969 he began illustrating a wildly popular series of calendars for the Sound Spectrum record store.

That same year also found Ogden drawing board-model logos for industry leader Hobie Surfboards, and within months he was hired by Jantzen swimwear to do their back-cover ads for SURFER Magazine. By this time, Ogden's fantasy scapes and bare-breasted nymphs were all but synonymous with surf art.

As Sam George later wrote, surfers during this period "begin defining themselves not by image but through imagination."

It was as if Ogden had received a vision of the surfing world's collective desires—perfect empty waves, clear skies, blue seas, beautiful clean-limbed boys and girls—and reflected it back on itself so eloquently that surf culture began shaping itself to fit Ogden's rendering. All these years later we still see his imagery when we close our eyes and dream our surfer's dreams.

The only surf-world artist to equal or surpass Ogden during this time was Rick Griffin, who, like Ogden, began with surf magazine cartoon work before making a dramatic crossover to the psychedelic. Where Griffin's later work was often hard to decipher, Ogden stay safely in the realm of fantasy and landscape; for better or worse, his style would inspire the phantasmagoric excesses of Chris Lassen and Robert Wyland.

Griffin and Ogden both contributed to a 1972 surf comic book, modeled after the underground Zap Comics, titled 

Meanwhile, Ogden earned a reputation as reclusive and difficult to work with, and while his paintings were occasionally featured in shows and exhibitions—and he picked up small jobs with Quiksilver, Billabong, and the Triple Crown of Surfing—he spent much of the last few decades of his life alone.

Ogden died in 2022, while working on a painting in his studio near Idlewild, California. He was 79.

 a large-format book by Craig Lockwood and published by Croul Publications, was released in 2015.

Ogden, Bill

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing