Surfski Art

Here's something completely different.  I walked into the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club a few weekends ago to find... paintings of paddling and lifesaving scenes.  "Who did these?" I asked.

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Tom Schilperoort

The 21 year old paddler is someone to watch - this season he's been training with Dawid Mocke and, at least partly as a result, he's been consistently coming in the top 3 or 4 at the Discovery Men's Health races this season. 

But - as you can see in the photos, he's a dab hand (so to speak) at creating arrestingly different images of paddling.

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"I use a mixture of collage - paper torn from magazines and newspapers - with acrylic paints, found pieces of card, plastic, beads and wood," he said.  "You could say it's a mixture of collage and township styles."

The artistic talent clearly runs in the family.  Tom is studying Industrial Design at university; his dad is an architect; mom is a designer; grandpa was an artist...  His dad, Mike, built a shark-shield protected version of the Fenn Mako6 - the story is featured on www.surfski.info.

Surfski World Tour

Tom has another year of his degree to go - and then wants to take a year off to follow the Surfski World Series.  He's hoping to fund this partly by creating and selling his artworks.  (He's bringing six of his paintings to the Hong Kong Dragon Run and the Dubai Shamaal with a view to selling them, so if you like what you see...  He can also work from photos and will gladly take commissions.)

Tom can be contacted on: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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