Fuel Tv Interview March 09

If Salvador Dali and Dr. Seuss fell down the rabbit hole onto a magical reef and started painting, they might look to San Clemente-based artist Heather Ritts for inspiration. 

Her whimsically surreal images have made her a favorite among local shapers and her custom designs are popping up on boards by Terry Senate Cole, Midget Smith, Stewart, Timmy Patterson, and Mayhem all along the California coast. At just 24, she’s painted more custom boards than she can count, assisted renowned artist Drew Brophy on a recently completed mural, created a t-shirt design for Ron Jon Surf Shops that’s already sold out, and is embarking on a new phase of inspiration herself.  We talked to her about inspiration and influence and how questions help keep art alive. Here’s her what she had to say.

So where do you find your inspiration?
I’m inspired by my day-to-day life, ideas that I’ve had. When I can’t sleep, I draw in my sketchbook until I do. I have weird dreams and ideas that come to me right before I go to sleep, but I don’t know exactly where they come from.  

I love the ocean. I surf all time.  Some people can go to the beach and think it always looks the same.  Every time I go to the beach, it looks different to me – the sunset, the clouds, the palm trees.  Churches [San Clemente, Ca.] can look like one beach one day, and then six months later, or after the rains, the sun will set differently and it will look like a totally different place. I try to get more in tune with the way I look things.  I’ll get ideas from that. I’m still inspired here, but it might be nice to get out and try something else, to get inspiration from somewhere else, meet new people, expand my horizons.  This year my goal is to travel more. 

How has your style changed, or how is it changing? 
I used to think my style was a certain way.  I had all these teachers who would say, ‘Just wait, it’ll change.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, right. This is my style.’ I knew it would get better, but I also knew how I wanted to do it. 

But ever since I’ve been apprenticing with Phil Roberts, everything has changed. He’s been helping me with watercolors and figures. I keep thinking, ‘Wow, I can do that, or this, or try that.’ So, my style keeps changing. I have my paint pen style and now my watercolor style, and they are completely different. 

I struggle with that a little. If someone were to recognize my surfboards and then see my watercolors at a different venue, they wouldn’t think they were mine.  I don’t think an artist’s work should all look the same, but I want them to have some similarity so that people can connect me to my art. I know that it’s a process and that it will eventually happen as I find myself. Now I want my style to keep evolving and changing!  What’s the point of always doing the same thing? I have my watercolors, but I also want to try oils, and I don’t know how that style is going to turn out either.  

I also really like learning about what other people want.  I realize that not everyone is going to want to buy what I want them to buy.  I want to be able to be able to talk to people and bring out what they are thinking, to bring out their idea and vision, and give them the opportunity for their ideas to come out through my art, with my style. My surfboards have been great for this. 

The surfboards have been a great step for me toward finding out what people want.  I’m able to take their ideas and apply it to what they want to do on a surfboard.  It’s not any different than doing it on a t-shirt, or sticker, or poster, or dealing with a CEO of a company or a graphic designer or any other commission where they tell you what they want you to do.  I’m actually dealing with people who don’t do that on a regular basis, and don’t know how to explain their ideas, or maybe they don’t really know what they want yet. So I get to fish around and make some sketches.  I think that’s really fun, bringing other people’s visions to life, and one of the reasons I was so drawn to illustration. 

Anyone can paint for themselves. I really enjoy painting for myself; but, at the end of the day, I really want people to buy my work.  

How have your experiences as an apprentice for Phil Roberts and as an assistant for Drew Brophy shaped you as an artist? 
When I got out of college, the Laguna College of Art and Design, I was super amped to do watercolors, because my senior portfolio was a lot of watercolors and surreal Dali-esque type of stuff. But I found that I was focusing in more on my ideas, rather than my technique. So I’ve tried to slowly pull back from my “ideas” and focus on my technique, and really learning how to draw and paint figures. You think when you go through school that you’re going to learn all of that immediately, but it really takes a lifetime to perfect all of those things. And then Phil [Roberts] came into my life. And now, even though I hate studying anatomy, he really pushes me to do it. I learned that I need to build my foundation first. 

I’ve been really focusing in on my watercolors and figures. 

How did you meet Phil? 
I met Phil when he started coming to my art shows, which is amazing because Phil Roberts is one of the most amazing painters anyone could ask for. And he’s just so nice. He splits a studio with Rich Reitveld, and I’ve had Rich Reitveld’s posters in my room since I was little!  

Every time I saw him he’d say, ‘Come to my studio, I’ll show you how to paint or fix this.’ I just thought he was being nice. As I got to know him, I thought I’d give it a try. Now I go up to the studio two and three times a month, and I’ll spend 8 to 10 hours there. 

It’s a really cool dynamic: Phil sits on one end and Rich on the other, and I plop myself in the middle and paint. They’ll walk by and make suggestions.  We joke around a lot. I don’t think I could ask for anything more.  

Phil also told me about designing t-shirts. I sent one design in and they bought it. It was my first t-shirt design ever and they’ve sold out of it. I’m submitting again. A lot.  

How about working on the mural; tell us about that experience. 
I had never done a mural before this year. Drew [Brophy] was hired by the company and I was his assistant. 

It was so overwhelming to look at 12 x 40 feet of blank wall.  It took five days. And I don’t know how we got it done in five days. It was really intense. One of the days I was a little frustrated. It’s hard to when you have two artists with two different styles.  But I’m good at emulating, because, after all, it was his gig, I am so tight in my work and am always about detail, detail, detail. But with a mural, you are supposed to look at it from 20 feet away.  So the little paint that makes the leaf turn has to be one giant piece instead of a bunch of little strokes.  It was very hard to loosen up, but a great learning experience.  He’d tell me not to spend more than a minute on a leaf. It was hard for me to not focus on the details and each individual brushstroke and instead watch how each piece came together to create the whole.  It was awesome! I can’t believe we did it! 

What are some other things you’d like to accomplish with your art? 
I’d really like to inspire younger girls.  I’m on Looped.com and I want to be a really good inspiration for girls.  I think it’s really hard, especially now, for girls to have strong role models with television and the Internet. I think it’s just really good to know more about surfers or artists and girls who do something to better themselves rather than just the way they look. 

I’ve been helped out so much.  And I’ve struggled with the whole media thing and image. But I think if you have strong role models and people who actually do things for a living that actually inspire other girls to say, ‘I don’t have to do it this way.  I can do it the way I want.’ 

When I do live demonstration, it’s usually at a big event or a hotel, and it’s all adults.  But at this one Roxy event, I had all these little girls swarming around. Nothing is better than when I’m painting a surfboard and an eight-year-old girl comes up and says, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so cool…can I do something like that?’ So I hand her my paint pens and say, ‘Alright, start,’ and she comes up with something awesome just out of her head. A little boy and his mom sat with me for an hour. You’d think he’d want to be over watching the skating or something, but he was sitting with his paint pens, painting GI Joes and robots, while I painted my flowers.  

Even the adults turn into little kids again. Art brings out the little kid in you and inspires your imagination and makes it ok to come up with silly and fun ideas.  

What advice would you give to other artists, and people who want to become better artists? 
I want people to have the confidence to ask questions, like I did, because the more questions you ask, the better off you are. A lot of people think they can just do it themselves, but I’m not like that, I think I need all the help in the world! 

I really want to be an approachable artist, and am willing to help out as much as I can.  I want people to have questions and come to me.  I don’t think I’m the best painter, but I do know that I’ve tried really hard to be where I’m at and to keep going. I really want to be an approachable artist and I want people to ask me questions. 

I’m still growing myself, and I will always grow as an artist.  I’ve learned that you are going to have slow times and really, really fast times and they are both a part of life. Stay focused on your goal and never give up on what you want to do.  

So what’s next? 
I have a show coming up at the Blue Laguna, in Laguna Beach, during the Art Walk, on Thursday, March 5. I’ll be there all night.  

Sometime in July I am having an all-ladies show in Costa Mesa with a beginning of summer theme.  I have a photographer, and an installation person, and a few others. I’ve always really wanted to do an all-girls show, so we are in the process of pulling that together. I just read about Pine Surf Shop and Gallery in New Jersey that burned down in January. The owners and artists lost everything. Apparently it was this really amazing center where people could go watch old surf movies and paint. It was one of the only stores that stayed open after the tourist season was over.  It’s so sad that they lost that, so I’d really like to try do something to help them. And we are trying to think of ways to incorporate that into our show.  

I’m working on a bunch of new t-shirt designs and a few commissions as well. Just trying to keep busy! 

To find out more about Heather and her work, visit her website athttp://www.abovethereefs.com.