Interview: Joanna Frye

Interview Transcript

Maia: My name is Maia Dery. This episode is part of a series called the Waves to Wisdom Interviews. The project is a simple one. I seek out people I admire— surfers, with what look to me to be ocean centered wisdom practices. I ask them if they’d be willing to share a surf session or two and then, after we’ve ridden some waves together, talk to me about their oceanic habits: about surfing, work, meaning, anything that comes up.

Joanna: Christians tend to isolate their spirituality from everything else. It happens on Sundays or in the early morning or some such and surfing, being in the ocean specifically, is like experience… experiencing God everywhere, all over, not just in my brain.

Joanna Frye is a visual artist and surfer who a few years ago decided to make a bold move. One of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard, once wrote

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

Joanna wasn’t entirely happy with the shape of her hours so she left her day job to try to earn a living by selling her paintings and found object assemblages. She’s a devout Christian who loves to paint the female nude and now a dear friend from whom I’ve learned a great deal. Maybe, most important for me, I’ve gotten a long needed understanding of how much my fear has gotten in the way of my connecting with others who don’t think like I do.

Joanna played a crucial role in my own gradual, halting process of gradually overcoming a nearly lifelong fear of Christians, spurred on by the rhetoric of the the religious right combined with the fact that my own life turned out to be not so heterosexual.

If our interview gives you just a sliver of all I’ve learned from this courageous, talented, and creative woman, you’ll leave this interview with an abundant gift. Welcome to Waves to Wisdom.

Maia: If you are comfortable with it, tell us your name, age and how long you’ve been surfing.

Joanna: Okay. I’m Joanna Frye and 37. I’m not quite sure of the next answer— probably 12 years 10 years 12 years.

Maia: Ok, so you were grown up when you learned how to surf [I was a grown up].  Tell that story how did you decide you needed to learn that?

Joanna: I moved to California and had lived there for a year and was watching people surf and thought it was really cool and was sitting there and just thought why aren’t you doing it if you think it’s so cool? And I had friends that were in the surf industry working for Surfline and so they kind of, on a trip to Mexico to camp and they threw me on a longboard and pushed me into waves and that was that.

Maia: Did you love it from the very first time?

Joanna: From the very first time.

Maia: Did you catch a wave that first day?

Joanna: I did. I don’t know I if I stood up I don’t really have a memory except for being freezing. I had no wetsuit I was in a bathing suit in, near Ensenada freezing. I got hit in the head with the board, I remember that [Laugh].

Maia: OK, and then you came back to California and what happened next in your surfer story?

Joanna: Next, I spent, I had $155 in my bank account and I spent $150 on a 6’6” little thruster, cause I didn’t know better and that’s how it all began.

Maia: Wow. And how long did it take you to surf that thruster?

Joanna: Woo… that was a humbling experience but you know I didn’t know that. I just thought, I would stand beside it, I couldn’t sit on it, I would fall off. So I would stand beside it, wait for a wave to come, turn around get on and paddle. But I had a cohort, Marie, and so, and we were obsessed. And so we just went every day. I bought an 80s neon orange and black wetsuit from the thrift store that said, I don’t remember what, something across my rear, just ridiculous and had holes all in it but we went every day. And then I eventually was standing and I couldn’t think of anything better. Ah

Maia: And where were you living in California at that time?

Joanna: San Clemente

Maia: And you are from North Carolina, [yes] tell a little bit about that. Where are you are from and how did you get to California.

Maia: I’m from Kernersville, K Vegas , Kernersville, North Carolina, it’s a small sweet little town grew up classically with lovely parents and a sister and, you know, tended the garden and went to sports practices and eventually went to school at East Carolina and then after that did AmeriCorps so made my way to Texas and then Colorado and eventually California.

Maia: And had there been anything prior to surfing that was similar?

Joanna: No.

Maia: No? Surfing was unprecedented for you? [Yes] OK, it felt different?

Joanna: Um… yeah, it’s the only thing that I’ve ever had that I actively wanted to do all the time and checked in on to see if I could, constantly.

Maia: OK, you have any idea why that is?

Joanna: Because it’s the best thing in the world [Laugh].

Maia: We concur in that assessment! And I want to say that right now we are sitting on this long couch with a long boxer in between us, named Rosie who is very comfortable and she is in your beautiful living room, in this old farmhouse in Wilmington, North Carolina. And this, you are the first interviewee who I know already we are friends now for, how long have we been friends?

Joanna: Three years, three and a half years—

Maia: I can’t believe there was a time before I knew you.

Joanna: Me neither, it seems like we have just always been [LAUGH]

Maia: LAUGH it seems that way to me too so lets’s talk a little bit about how we met, what is your memory of how we met?

Joanna: I met you, I was working for the WB Surfcamp, and you were working for Guilford College and I was an instructor for the kids you brought down, I guess that was August, or something. And you were the most exuberant person I had ever met. But really what I remember is that, I mean I was teaching a group of kids, I remember one of them being more challenging than some others, but not really much more than that about that. And then you came up to me afterwards and said something along the lines of, in the parking lot, “You were meant to do this! You’re so…” I forget what you said but you were so appreciative of me and automatically complementary and I was just, “Oh! Okay” And I just remember going home feeling like a champ, you know?

Maia: You were a champ! And I remember that individual who was particularly challenging, and I think a challenged in that moment [right, right!] she was far outside of her, anything close to a comfort zone, and you were so patient and kind, and reassuring. I think she stayed in that water much longer she would have in the company of any other human being I can imagine.

Joanna: I don’t even really remember any of that but, but then I didn’t see you again for what, I don’t know, a year or two years after that and I spotted you… mind you, I hide from people, for whatever reason, generally, but I spotted you at the farmers market where I was working and yelled out, “Maia?” So out of character for me for me!

Maia : And so pleasant for me!

Joanna: Yeah, and there were and then we were friends.

Maia: I have a very intense memory of that day at the farmers market where you were working, we’ll get to your work in a minute but you were working and I was in, just in the absolute nadir of dealing with a recently broken heart and it was so encouraging to have somebody excited to see me who I hadn’t seen and to ask to surf it was so fun and healing just in that very moment even if we had never surfed together it was so good so I’m am forever grateful he called out that day.

Okay so so we went surfing that day and we instantly bonded over a million surf movies and books [oh yeah, that’s right] do you remember you’d actually gotten out of the water and then came back out…

Joanna: To tell you about 180 South.

Maia: Right, exactly.

Maia: 180 South is a documentary by Chris Malloy that starts as a pretty standard adventure story. A young white American man is inspired by his heroes— two men who are, in my opinion, heroic, the late Doug Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard. These two are best known as the founders of, respectively, The North Face and Patagonia but are celebrated in the context of the film alongside Kris Tompkins and many, many locals of the Patagonia region of South America, for their work on behalf of conservation. The Tompkins, especially used their own significant financial resources to create the largest conservation area in, Chile and Argentina, over 2 million protected acres of mountains, valleys and coastlines in the Patagonia region.

Neither Joanna nor I are accomplishing anything on this scale but, still, her choices have served as an inspiration to me as I embraced what I knew was the necessary but nerve-wracking step away from formal education and its regular paycheck to more directly pursue my own right livelihood.

Maia: Okay so we’ve been surfing together regularly and in some ways you have been a primary inspiration for me over the last couple of years in some unprecedented ways because I’ve been contemplating making a big change in my life and watching you and the way that you have courageously pursued your right livelihood in this moment I think has really allowed me to get my head and heart and eyeballs wrapped around an alternative to what I’ve been doing for the last 17 years which is teaching at a small college, which has been wonderful and it was probably time for a change.

 

Maia: Can you tell little bit about what you do in the world?

Joanna:  Okay well, I’m an artist, it feels really good to say that. I paint. I love to paint. I do other things as well because paying bills is important but mostly I love to paint and do prints and block prints and things like that and I go to farmers markets or art festivals and I do wholesaling and whatever I can do at this point to kind of support the lifestyle that I love and get to work at home with my dogs and sit on the porch and surf when I want and work in a way that makes we not wait for the weekend and feel like my day is real every day. I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know what day it is. I just know that it’s the day I wake up and I make art and I surf somehow there’s enough cereal and, you know, and there’s usually salad [LAUGH] it’s good.

Maia: Fantastic, okay and how long has it been since you quit your day job to become a full time artist?

Joanna: I feel like this is year three, maybe I’m going into year four of, no I think three, of being just an artist, solely an artist. Um, yeah, wow, it’s working.

Maia: Did you. It’s working. You seem fairly well-fed.

Joanna: I am well fed.

Maia: Did you, were you always an artist as a child?

Joanna: Oh yes, I mean Bob Ross was my best, best friend [Laugh] every Saturday at 11, I could not wait. Yeah I mean I was always… I remember sitting out  on the picnic table in the yard with the Q-tips and those little watercolor things and making, my mom was a French teacher and so there was and she’s artistic in her own way and she’s very interested in culture and arts and so we, in class, she was also my French teacher, cause I went to a small private school where she taught for a moment and we would do the Impressionist painters. And so I would sit outside at home also and just make these little Impressionist paintings and drawings and I loved it. I would draw in the sandbox instead of build things, you know.

Maia: And you studied art in school?

Joanna: I did I got my BFA in painting and drawing at East Carolina University.

Maia: How was that? Being an art student?

Joanna: It was great. The instructors were incredible, the facility itself, the studios they provided us with, our personal space, but also working with other students all together, music, fun, it was great. I didn’t really feel like I measured up to what I thought an artist was.

There seemed to be more angst and just trying, people wanting to get something out on canvas. And I just like the act of painting and I love beauty and so I didn’t ever felt like I quite fit in that way but overall it was wonderful. I’m so thankful that I chose art by default as my major cause I had to pick something, you know.

Maia: Can you talk a little bit about the process of making art and the way that you think it was different for you from your peers who in turn led you to feel like you might not be a real artist.

Joanna: I think it there were sort of two categories of people, people went into graphics or they stayed in the fine arts and I didn’t want to do graphic art. Is Rosie snoring going to mess this up?

Maia: It’s perfect, Rosie snoring is perfect, what could be better?

Joanna: But I didn’t feel like things were falling on canvas and it wasn’t I wasn’t edgy and it wasn’t you know I like classic figure painting and I liked light and line and the physical act of painting and specific intersections of line, it was a different thing. So there was a moment though, the painting hanging behind your head. Right there is the first painting that kind of fell out of me ever and it’s probably the reason I still own it. And that was a moment where I felt like my art, my spiritual life, it all intersected and came out physically and so maybe I got a glimpse of what they were doing all the time or maybe they were just making it up all the time I don’t know but it took me a while to get there but a lot of the times I’m not  there but I still enjoy painting and then something I am and it falls out. I don’t think it’s anything wrong with either way but I did used to think there was something wrong when it was more technical… technical’s not a good word because it sounds like drudgery… but I love, I love that aspect of it. I like the technical part of it. So there was just two different ways for it to come out.

Maia: This is one of the profound lessons that that my students, my successful students have to learn is that if your work in the world to be an artist, your work is to make art whether you’re inspired to make art or not.

Joanna: Right.

Maia: In the same way that a banker does not have to be inspired. We need the banker to be a good banker [right] and you have to show up and hopefully the banker is inspired at times [yeah] but the practice has to unfold regardless.

Joanna. Right, and I find that when I’m forcing the unfolding I eventually am inspired by what fell out. You know, and it’s not because I was inspired and it came out, it’s because it came out and it inspired me and I was excited because of it.

Maia: This insight Joanna offered is, in my experience, invaluable. It’s not always easy to summon the courage to maintain discipline and effort , or even to justify continuing to expend resources on any creative or design process, especially when the outcome is unknowable. This can be true whether it’s an art project or a redesign of some aspect of your life or an innovation at work you’re working on, But Joanna’s right, continued creation does, eventually, lead the struggling creator to be inspired by something they come up with or notice, just enough fuel to help them plow ahead with energy and momentum and faith in that unknowable outcome.

Of course, it never hurts to have some help and encouragement along the way. Soon after she began catching waves regularly, Joanna met and older fellow named Dennis who she now refers to as her surf dad. Dennis took her under his wing, showed her some local breaks and began introducing her to other surfing friends.

Maia: So, you moved back to North Carolina when?

Joanna: Seven years ago, I think seven.

Maia: And did you actively start making art again before you moved back or after?

Joanna: Before. I did have an art show in California near the end. I did a big painting for Dennis of of Middles from a photograph that he loved.

Maia: What’s Middles?

Joanna: Middles is the break just above Lowers which is a famous surf break in San Clemente, it’s on the World Tour, it’s a beautiful, a beautiful break. So I’d done this painting for him and then I kind of, you know, it got me going a little bit and so I did some pieces and had a small show in a hair salon there but I also his best friend’s wife was making these shell bottle things that I do now and so I worked with her some just for extra money but I’ve always loved bottles and antique bottles and such, and the ocean and he thought we would be good pair and we were. So worked with her for a couple years and learned how to use a soldering iron and just kind of, I really love making those, it’s fun because they don’t represent anything about me it’s two beautiful things coming together, they don’t make me nervous, I’m not scared to show them to people. I enjoy that kind of art, or craft. So that kind of got it going and that was kind of, thank God, because that was sort of my segue into the art world cause it’s the way I make money, most of my money here. Now it might be half-and-half with paintings but it was the way I got to shift over.

Maia: OK,  I’m very curious in part for selfish reasons because I’m in the middle of my own shift. Was that scary, to decide, “I’m just gonna be an artist, I’m gonna find a way to make this work?”

Joanna: Yes, but I think that every move I’ve made I haven’t known what I was gonna do, I moved to Denver without a job, I don’t, but I do a lot of praying about stuff and then when I feel, I mean in a real way and I know what peace is and when I feel that I just go and it’s fine. But it was scary. I mean, yeah of course there was, there were some elements where I just thought, well… but I felt like that I still have no idea what happens next and I still go, “Well, I’ll probably eat.” You know, it’s fine.

Maia: It’s truly amazing to me to watch you do that. Yeah, it’s quite something.

Joanna: I’m sure it’s terrifying to my family but… LAUGH.

Maia: Not only are you eating but the dogs, the two dogs that are taking up the that the better part of your heart [yes], I think, most of the time also…

Joanna: That’s so funny that you say that I yet they eat and I I go back and read my journal sometimes and I did this morning, from… maybe it was February and I had literally written down, “I’m so grateful that Rosie and Ruby have food today.” because, you know, sometimes it’s dicey.

Maia: Aww,  yeah yeah…

Joanna: But they did.

Maia: So you mentioned your faith, praying a couple of times. I have several questions about that but I want to start selfishly again, which is to say that you are one of the people and one of the, and being with you this is one of the set of experiences that have allowed me to, I think for the most part, overcome what had been a lifelong fear, prejudice against, fear of people who identify as Christian. And I think I came by this very honestly. My mother was raised Catholic and then became active in the Women’s Movement a little later than many of her peers, but in the 70s and she was pissed off about Catholicism and a lot of the lessons…

Joanna: I can imagine.

Maia: Yes.  And in retrospect, she raised us quite Catholic, it was secular Catholic but the world view and the way that we look at good works and all of that [right] really very, very similar, analogous even. But the college where I’ve taught for the last 17 years is a Quaker college and Quakers can certainly help one, some Quakers at least, somebody who’s been raised like me in this classic academic brat, left-leaning liberal, what’s-so-funny-about-peace-love-and-understanding mindset, Quakers can help you get rid of that silly demarcation line between the scary Christians who, who judge you and are mad at you for being deviant in any way and people who are safe but really, I think our friendship has gotten me to the point where now, when people say something like “I prayed on it,” or “I prayed about it…” and, you know, “My faith…”, fill in the blank, no matter what that faith is, I don’t have an automatic tense…

Joanna: right “Must flee, must flee…”

Maia: I better watch what I’m saying and not tell them too much about myself and

I guess my question is do you have any response to that?

Joanna: I’m just so grateful that that has been the shift. I mean I understand why people are afraid of Christians and I know you can’t see my fingers but there are air quotes like, it’s awful, it’s awful and every group of people has some extreme people that are bad to other people but it seems that Christianity has a huge group of people that are bad to other people and it, it’s devastating, it’s heartbreaking and it hurts people terribly and I don’t want to be a part… I’m not that, you know. And it’s good to have gotten a chance to kind of talk it out with you and it’s helped me be able to figure out what I, how people of my faith are affecting other people because I’ve, I’ve seen your trepidation about it and to be able to relate that to other people that are Christians that I now and say. “Hey, hear what you just said? Here’s how it sounds to people. It’s been a good learning experience for me too and it hasn’t… I just think it’s so important that. I want to start this part over… I just kills me this whole topic is kills me, breaks my heart about all of the stupid Christians.

Maia: Well, you know I can imagine I think, I can imagine how difficult that would be, you know to have something that’s such a defining part of how you view the world, and your role in it, and how to move through it in ways that are meaningful and positive… you know, how difficult it would be have people use your stories, your way of defining truth, to do the opposite of everything that feels fundamental about that tradition to you.

Joanna: Right, well they’re just using my, the label of what is true and good in my world and putting it on something else that they’re doing. And it’s so destructive.

Maia: So one one of the, I think, the reason that it’s been so powerful to me to be close to you and wrestle with this fear of people who label themselves Christians, or talk about Jesus, or talk about praying is that we’re both frequently immersed together in this literal higher power that I don’t have any trouble getting my head around, being the boss of me. And and just the palpable similarity or overlap in the ways that we draw joy and meaning and, and priority and purpose from that interaction with the water. It’s really given me a way to talk about ultimate things with you and even develop the language to ask questions without any fear. What is, if any, the relationship between your practice as a Christian and your practice as a surfer?

Joanna: I think for me surfing is an expression, oh my gosh, I’ll get a little bit teary. It makes me, it’s so, it’s like a gift. It’s… so I sit here in the morning and I read my Bible, and I journal, and I listen to music, and I pray and try to listen, try to quiet down enough to listen but when I go to the ocean, I’ll go, if there’s something really big, I’ll try to go alone and be alone, and usually hopefully there are no waves so no ones’ out but, in those moments. But for me it’s just gratitude it’s just like this beautiful thing that he’s made and also, in Christianity, you know, God is in everything and all of creation worships him, including the trees, including the ocean, including any, everything he created it, it’s his and it worships him and to be a part of it and be immersed in it and to feel, it’s kind of like mutual worship, me in the wave, me in the sea, me in that the whole thing is this beautiful present of joy from him to all of us and it’s more, it’s that. It’s not a spiritual practice it’s like a Thanksgiving almost.

Maia: Wow. That is wonderful. Okay, so interesting. So in that way surfing is really different for you than it is for me and because instead of having an I and Thou relationship with the ocean it’s almost like you have a “We” and Thou relationship. Oh my gosh that is so interesting. OK, good. So what about your art practice? How does that fit in to this? Cause these are, you are one of the people I know who is disciplined in this regular participation in these activities, really almost daily your participating in each of these activities that the overlap of those is fascinating to me. So what about art and your faith and your practice as a surfer.

Joanna: There’s so much hard happening in the world and to find the meaning and purpose in doing art and how’s that important and how to…  so it’s taken me a minute to get there but I feel like I have and I feel like I’m created this way. This is who I am. And if I am meant to be, you know they always talk about the church as a body, it’s something that’s in the Bible a lot, about how we’re all important, that ear, the fingernail, the brain, the whatever. I’m the artist and so if I continue on doing the things that aren’t the artist I’m a, not serving my purpose and b, not being as helpful as I can be. So if I just get it together, calm down and go paint, I can actually serve the purpose that I’m created for. And um I think that anything that feels so, so much an outpouring or an overflow of who I am— anything that feels like it just naturally comes out, like painting, or surfing should happen because when I’m doing those things and in my spiritual practice consistently I feel like I can give to people instead of need from them.

Maia: There’s a kind of abundance, there’s even extra to give as opposed to a deficit [right] with this feeling of scarcity. So, in a way I mean this reminds me of, of what I’ve heard from a lot of Buddhists who essentially say you should not, you should not worry about generosity until you’ve figured out what is yours to give. You have to tend to yourself and quiet yourself and take some steps along on spiritual path…

Joanna: Right, cause otherwise it’s giving out of duty, instead of giving out of love.

Maia: And maybe potentially giving something that’s not such a gift after all.

Joanna: Right exactly [yeah] yeah your intentions matter.

Maia: Okay, fantastic so can you talk a little bit about painting. I know you love to paint, especially and I know something about the various kinds of paintings you make, and we’ll put some up with the interview on the blog. Can you talk about the various things you paint and how you feel about them?

Joanna: LAUGH- Yes, so all through school I was, I did figure painting my senior show, figure paintings, the whole thing. I did, when I started working here as an artist I did a lot of figure painting and it was well-received some times and sometimes I got dirty looks from women that would hurry their husbands along or I got lewd comments from men, “Is that you sweetheart?” you know, just disgusting people. And I also got asked to take them down at a Kure Beach market, so that was cool.

So I definitely shifted I didn’t want to carry them around. I didn’t want to be nervous every time someone came up to where I was working, it just wasn’t worth it to me and didn’t feel worth it, nobody— quit looking at my stuff like I just didn’t want to show anybody. I didn’t it’s hard for me already to put my work out there I don’t want anybody to look at me or my things but that’s not what artists do so… so that kind of ruined that for a little bit. And so I did a little bit of figure painting style but I kind of shifted into some work painting the ocean which I wasn’t really trying to do actually, now that I think about it. I had one hanging in the back of my tent, just for background noise, selling bottles and a shop owner, Airlie Moon, where I sell a lot of bottles, a beautiful store, asked me if she could have it in the store. And I said sure and it sold that week. So and that started that. I really enjoy painting the ocean. I really love painting the sky also, a lot, the clouds… It’s just a different thing for me than… figure painting is more, I don’t know where it comes from, I just want to do it.

It doesn’t make sense in the way I grew up.  I’m sure my family was a little bit on edge, they’re a very conservative Christian family you know. But it’s just what wants to come out it’s what I want to paint, it’s the beauty of the line and it’s always women and they’re just beautiful. And you know in my belief system God created women last and finally as the crowning glory of creation, as the beauty, not only the beauty, and it’s just true. I mean it’s just true. When you look around I think women are stunning, they’re curvy and or not curvy but they’re not angular like men and and I just love the lines. So that’s what I do.

When I paint the sea it’s just a different thing. I enjoy it. I live here. I like to see how people get excited about it when they see it on canvas.

Maia: As I’ve watched other people interact with your paintings of this place and I have my own, you would say, spiritual orientation, has a lot to do with the way we interact with the more than human world and our relationship with place, including my own, is so bereft. It’s… we’re all so disconnected and I work very hard to roll in the mud, and splash in the waves, and I’m an aspiring animist, I really want to feel like I am continuous with the planet and all of of life and not-life and just the whole place. So, one of the one of the great joys for me of watching people interact with your landscapes and seascapes is to see them get excited about the place or to almost sometimes feel reverent about the place in a way that art allows them to do. Because they don’t cultivate this connection in the same way that dirt rollers and wave splashers do.

Joanna: Well and I forget that it’s not regular to them.

Maia: Right

Joanna: And that it’s special and maybe they don’t live here when they come and see my work may want to take them home and maybe it’s just a different experience for them.

Maia: Right. Interesting so you’ve got, there’s a small painting that you made that’s hanging in my living room, I am one lucky duck, that is a little bit of an abstract seascape and a little bit of a figure painting. Do you, what your feelings about that? That intersection because that’s rare for you to do something like that.

Joanna: Yeah didn’t I know that, I just in my head that’s a figure painting. [OK] That was the first painting, I’d been so scared of money not being abundant that I had been painting so much to try to sell and then I finally after many conversations with you, decided screw this, paint a painting and don’t think about it.

That was the first painting where I broke out of being a fear-based painter and just painted. And it came out beautifully, honestly, because and I didn’t mean to but I remember just focusing on instead of letting myself look at the whole painting, looking at each you know 2 square inches that I was working on only. Saying, do you like this? Do you like this? Do you personally, you like this? And then eventually stepping back and it was done. So it was just a new way to start and I still use that I’m working on a big 36 x 48 up there and I still get in tight in those little spaces and make sure I like the little space I don’t care if it’s a knee or an elbow or a cheek it, I have to like that space and it’s been an important thing to to carry through for me.

Maia: You love the figures the most? These are really what are in your heart to paint. Can you characterize your approach, your technical approach, your expressive approach, is there a particular art historical tradition that you feel like you’re riffing off of? Talk to me about those.

Joanna: Mainly for me it starts as a drawing with paint. Mostly it’s about line work and figuring out the proportions because I usually just make it up on the canvas. I just start drawing a lady but…

Maia: So you do not work from photographs or models?

Joanna: I do not. I’m not opposed to it, I like model, I like live figure painting and drawing. It costs money and I tend to work, I want to work alone. There are classes here but I just prefer to do it in my studio so I make it up as I go and then, but I have, I do look at a lot of Egon Schiele, I love his work. Some of it’s too erotic for me but I think he’s a brilliant drawer, brilliant. And so sometimes I look at his, the poses of his fingers before I start, because they’re so angular and so odd and I like things that are a bit off. And then I, I just start to sort of fill in and move things around as it happens, but it starts as a drawing.

Maia: So do you have a vision of what you want it to look like or does it…

Joanna: Sometimes I do— it never ends up being that but it always gives me a jumping point. I usually end up needing to mess the canvas up because the big white blank so’s scary that I just stand there frozen and do nothing. But if I can get something wrong on there, I can fix it and then I move on from there.

Maia: I would love it if you would say something about the character of the paint on the canvas because your work is representational but it’s also a little bit expressionistic, it’s not, I wouldn’t call it chunky, but you’re, you’re a brushy sort of painter…

Joanna:  Yes, part of what I was saying about enjoying the physical act of painting is how the paint feels. So I work hard to get a texture that feels a little bit gloppy and easy to glide around. I like the way it feels coming off of particular brushes I think I use maybe three brushes out of the 60 I have for the most part. I want the lines to have different weight to them in different areas and then I want to come around those lines with some glops of paint and mush it around make a new line. Yeah, the paint matters to me.

Maia: Is there is there a way in which paint and water are at all analogous in your practices of surfing and painting? Do you ever feel that way as surfer when you’re making, because you’re really quite adept… when you’re making lines as you draw on the wave with your board, is there any overlap or are they just completely different practices?

Joanna: It feels totally different to me, it may be intrinsically I mean…

Maia: How is it different?

Joanna: Because in painting I’m using my brain so much. My eyes are analyzing and I’m, I’m feeling the paint through the brush but I’m, I’m watching it mostly and a lot of the time it’s me leaving something that happens, like recognizing something good instead of painting over it. Most of it’s editing and not… most of it’s editing or editing out or leaving in something that happened and maybe I didn’t have anything to do with it just kind of woops! look how that, you know, that mushed down the middle the brush and went over here, thank God that happened and then moving on. Surfing is just pure glee and it’s… the lines happen, well, they also happen by themselves, but they don’t feel the same way— painting is more frenzied, I think, than surfing is, in that moment when I’m really in sort of a flow, I just have to keep going, sometimes I forget I’ll think of a new color and forget to put it on my brush and just keep painting with the other color by accident and I have to make myself switch out whereas surfing is just expressive and more of a release.

Maia: I wonder about this because this is true for me, that the difference between making, for me it’s photography, and being in a state of flow when you’re making art, or being a state of flow in your surfing is that when you’re the creative force you’re the momentum you, you feel a kind of pressure, a kind of responsibility that you don’t feel when you’re surfing [right] you’re riding this other momentum…

Joanna: Right! It’s like I’m being painted instead of being the painter.

Maia: Okay so, the premise behind Waves to Wisdom is that there are some people in the world who have an ocean-centered practice and especially surfers whose regular involvement with the ocean makes them better people, allows them to figure out how they relate to the big picture or what they should do in their life. Is that a fair characterization of the role surfing place in your life?

Joanna: I think that surfing reminds me how small I am and reminds me that I’m not just a mind, I’m also a body and that it’s important to connect them. And so for me it’s less that surfing in particular shows me who I am or how I relate but that it, it just keeps me in balance, keeps me in check. It reminds me of the truth of that what you were saying about your life, I am a part of all of it and that that’s the waves and me both worshiping, we are all doing that we are a we and it’s good to not isolate. Christians tend to isolate their spirituality from everything else. It happens on Sundays or in the early morning or some such and surfing, being in the ocean specifically, is like experience… experiencing God everywhere, all over, not just in my brain.

Maia: The necessity of attention in surfing does not allow you to get too far into your head.

Joanna: Right you have to be present.

Maia: You have to be present. It’s for me, it’s a practice that allows me to connect in ways, with other humans, with the more than human world, it’s a practice that’s not rivaled by anything else that I’ve ever tried and there are plenty of things that I also love: I love hiking the mountains love swimming in streams, I like paddling boats and plenty of other activities that make me feel close to what is big, and large, and powerful but nothing like surfing where it feels like it’s part art, part spiritual practice, all fun.

Joanna: I’ve never had anything bring me so much joy, so much joy.

Maia: And we got to experience some joy this morning, didn’t we? How was that?

Joanna: It was so fun, so fun! Tiny, lovely little longboard waves, sunshine, water’s warming up, all of it. It was the beginning of summer.

Maia: Okay is there anything that you would like to say that we haven’t talked about? About surfing, art, life ?

Joanna: I would like to say that in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible the second verse says that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. It’s my favorite of all time because he was the original, he loves the water, he was just hanging out on the water.

Maia: That is so good. thank you very much. I really appreciate all of this and all of you, and I’m so excited to share your story and your art.

Joanna: Well thank you, this has been lovely.

To see Joanna’s work, learn about coaching with Maia, Waves to Wisdom retreats, or Conservación Patagonica park in Patagonia, visit wavestowisdom.com.