Michael Tilden Art

If you were standing next to him at your local grocery store you’d never imagine that the guy picking through the organic avocados was an amazing surf artist and talented illustrator.  

Artist Michael Tilden has been a waterman all his life but his career in the arts didn’t start in earnest until his daughter was heading off to College in 2013 and he bought himself his first iPad.  Sketching for fun and posting to social media he quickly was noticed by the surfing and boating public for his illustrations of the salt-infused memories which he held tightly inside his minds eye. Michael pixel-painted those secret surf spots of his youth. The guys riding that one last wave before the sun went down. Loading up the car with buddies, boards and wax and heading out.  Of course there are memories of the cars he drove and the boards he rode. Always giving nod to the best shapers and wave riders and honoring them too in his unique style that somehow captures the authentic feel of the surfing/waterman lifestyle.

Today Tilden enjoys his semi-retirement, living near the water in Southern Orange County, California and lavishing love on his 1971 Grand Banks 32.  Michael has come full circle since those days of growing up around the ocean on his folks Newporter Ketch and those family sailing trips to Catalina.

Surf art is much more than something to fill up empty space on a wall; every piece – in whatever form - represents the very soul of the surf lifestyle. Even before the heyday of surf magazines and for sure before social media, surfers painted on their boards, on the sides of their surf mobiles, and on storm walls at the beach.