**“Inspired early on by my father’s paintings, I grew up in the shadow of his brilliance. He was an aeronautical engineer at NASA during the golden era of the moon missions, and his creativity left a lasting impression on me. Raised in the port town of Ponce Inlet, Florida, I knew from the start that surfing would be my life. By a young age, I became both a champion and a professional surfer. But when my father passed away, grief and depression set in. Through much of my twenties, I lost myself to alcohol and drugs, and eventually lost everything else along with it. To survive, I worked on fishing boats, pressed into deck service—shanghaied by my own existence. After several near-death escapes, I found sobriety at thirty-one. With that came a hard-won inner peace, and for the first time in twenty-five years, I picked up a paintbrush again. What began as a simple joy, and grew as others connected with my art, has become something deeper: a third chapter of a splintered mind, but a com