The Many Shades of Wade Koniakowsky

Outside was dismal and drizzly, but inside one warm Carlsbad living room, Polynesian girls swung their hips, and clean perfect sets peeled around long point breaks banked in thick palm tree forests.
    The man behind the magic is Wade Koniakowsky, the North County surfer-painter who’s phasing out his successful career in advertising to pursue his true calling, creating fine art. And he wants to do it his way: painting perfect waves, and making money while he’s at it.
    “Creative people are often lower on the food chain in the business world, and I’m kind of trying to turn that upside down,” he said, relaxing in his gallery-style living room. “Surfing came naturally as a subject, because it was intermingled with my life. But I guess there’s this tradition in oceanscapes. A wave crashing, the moon shining through the back of the wave, with some sparkles. I need a little bit more. I want to see a set peeling around a point that goes for miles.”
    When the Texas-born painter is ready to render his perfect-world barrels, hibiscus-adorned surf wahines, or steel and mango-colored cloudbanks, he cranks up the Miles Davis or Brazilian Bossa Nova and turns to oil paints.
    “Acrylic paints are less soulful,” he said. “Oil is just the best paint, with centuries of tradition backing it. It has great elasticity, opacity, and luminosity. And it’s more natural, made from ore, dirt, minerals, things that come from the earth. It’s more soulful.”
    Koniakowsky’s work centers on a few identifiable styles. There are the bright, commercial-feeling Polynesian pieces that hearken back to the 1920s and 1930s Golden Age of tourism posters. His advertising background is most evident here, with stylized renditions of alluring Polynesian girls, and aquamarine wave breaks breaking so perfectly and splashily it almost seems cartoon-like.
    There are also the California-impressionist landscape pieces, which trade color vibrancy for more muted, meditative chromatic schemes that give the paintings the retro, sepia feel of 1970s surf photography.
    And finally, there are the big, juicy, out-and-out wave and oceanography pieces that make a surfer’s mouth water. Glassy swells, offshore winds, and the best day Pipeline or Swamis ever had, all showcased in gleaming oil paint perfection.
    “Surfers are a nomadic people that want to travel the world in search of that elusive wave, and they end up in these beautiful places,” Koniakowsky said. “That’s what I end up painting. I want my work to give off a certain vibe: warmth; thick, humid, heavy air; color and tonal atmosphere; the smell of the jungle and the salt.”
    Koniakowsky, 52, spends time each day in his in-home studio. From there, he paints and works on marketing his work to galleries all over the world. His work hangs in galleries in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, England, both coasts of the U.S., and in several Southern California art museums. Past clients include Roxy and Surfrider, and he has also designed posters for major surfing events, including the Rabbit Kekai International Longboard Championships.
    The former creative marketing director is savvy about what sells and what does not, having no illusions about why most people buy art: to decorate their home.
    “Some artists get offended about that,” he said, laughing. “They’re like, ‘I put in my sweat and blood, my subliminal meaning, and you’re thinking about matching your freaking couch?’ But the reality is, it meets a need. I didn’t invent capitalism. I’m just trying to survive in it.”
    Although Koniakowsky donates work to organizations and causes he believes in, he takes great pride in selling his work.
“There’s a remuneration, there’s a transaction,” he said. “Creating a painting is creating value, and selling a painting makes it a complete cycle. I want to make a living as an artist, and have that value recognized. That’s a real exciting thing.”
    Koniakowsky lives in Carlsbad with his wife, Lynn, and two daughters, Jaime and Katy. Check out more of his work online at www.koniakowsky.com.