| Caia KOOPMAN- USA Born March 19th 1968 Lives and works Oceanside, California – USA As a native Californian Caia Koopman earned her B.A. in Art at UC Santa Cruz while learning to skate pools, ramps, and Derby parks. Her Skating led to skateboard graphics and her first limited edition team t-shirt design for a local skateboard company. After earning her degree, Caia moved to the mountains to snowboard and spent many winters following the snow in Tahoe, Utah and Colorado. Caia’s love for snowboarding inspired her to pursue a career creating snowboard graphics. Her paintings have been used as graphics for snowboards, skateboards and wakeboards for major companies like K2, Morrow, Joyride, Roxy, Hurley, Volcom, Acme, Hyperlite and OP. Caia’s paintings tend to incorporate the connectivity between people and the environment, often including birds, bugs, snakes and flowers. Caia is inspired by beauty, color, dreams, nature, politics, and life. | ||
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InterviewWhen/how did you discover your love and talent for art?My great grandmother was an amazing artist, she used to draw with me, and I’ve always loved to draw. In college, at UCSC, I was planning to major in math but I was really enjoying my art classes so I became a fine arts major instead. I graduated with big dreams of becoming a professional snowboarder but as it turned out I was much better suited for designing board graphics for the pro-snowboards rather than being one myself. That’s when I began my career as an artist, I designed board graphics and tee shirt graphics for mostly snow and skateboard companies while still spending the majority of my time snowboarding and skating. Now I actually spend most of my time working but I love my work so I am lucky. Who influences your art? As a kid my parents dragged me to every museum they could and I’ve been inspired by so many different artists along the way that it’s hard to give credit to just a few. But there are a few favourites including Frida Kahlo, Mark Ryden, Joe Sorren, and recently Blaine Fontana. Frida Kahlo’s work inspired me to tell stories in my paintings; she also inspired me to include more personal elements. I’d been doodling strange little big headed girls for years when I first saw Mark Ryden’s work. His strange, big headed, little girls sort of validated my subject matter and inspired me to really learn to paint. And Joe Sorren inspired me to loosen up creatively and to paint in layers. Recently Blaine Fontana has been an inspiration to me, his work motivates me to try to keep up and think bigger than one canvas. How does the board sports culture influence your art? I was inspired by the freedom, creativity and originality of skateboard graphics plus I loved to skateboard so I was totally sucked in, doing skateboard graphics seemed like a dream job to me back in the day. Designing skateboard and snowboard graphics was a great way for me to get my foot in the door as a freelance illustrator. In order to make a living as an artist I had to branch out, now days I do many different sorts of freelance art including a few board graphics every now and then. How do you feel about wood as a medium? Lately I’ve been painting on wood, for me it’s something new and challenging, it has an organic quality that adds another layer of interest to the painting. I like to let a little bit of the grain show through the paint. As a rider and artist, how important are board graphics to you? As a rider having a piece of art on my board is just another avenue of self expression and as an artist we tend to love to express ourselves. | ||
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