Ogden, Bill (1943 – 2022)

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 beg...