Los Osos resident Carey Lynch takes a look at the mostly empty skatepark in front of him before standing on his board and descending the halfpipe.
As the rush of wind hits his face, he takes in the view: Colorfully painted concrete ramps surround him and a chain-link fence skirts the edge of the Los Osos skatepark. The scene bursts with creative inspiration for Lynch, who turns recycled objects into the canvases for his newly inspired visions.
“My art is free and loose; I work in an improvised way, similar to the way I skate,” Lynch said. “It allows me to behave and express myself in a way that is inspired by the things around me.”
The Central Coast native is an abstract artist who blends the freedom of expression he’s found in skateboarding with a focus on upcycling.
“It’s something that I do that helps with not wasting, but more importantly it also allows me to create something that pulls from past and future,” he said.
Along with recycled paints being a staple of his work, he uses myriad objects as his canvases, including skateboards and surfboards he’s ridden, glass, doors, mirrors, maps, plywood, tools, salvaged construction materials, and tarps. Recently, he used window screens and a large jacuzzi cover.
“There’s so much stuff already in existence, so it’s like, ‘Who am I to go and create something new?'” Lynch said. “If something has already been painted on—an easel or something—and it’s sitting there after the fact being unused, who am I to go and buy a brand new one?”
The importance of using recycled materials stems from Lynch’s time out of state when he attended Northern Arizona University to receive his Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art with an emphasis on painting. While there, financial factors limited his ability to buy new materials, and, at the encouragement of his professors, Lynch learned to value anything he could find as a canvas to create on.
“Painting on these objects has helped me find inspiration,” he said. “There are certain qualities on these objects before I even get to them, and that allows me to create something that I feel is accurate to the emotions drawn from those objects.”
That isn’t to say Lynch solely takes inspiration from those found objects. As his partner, Courtney Davis, describes, Lynch also approaches his art with humor and openness.
“He doesn’t take himself too seriously, which allows him and his artwork to be really approachable,” Davis said. “This style of painting allows the viewer to uncover what they want in his work, leading to a wide variety of interpretations and feelings.”
Davis has seen Lynch evolve over the years while he maintained an open mindset. Artists like Yayoi Kusama, Helen Frankenthaler, and Andy Warhol serve as major inspirations for Lynch. What he receives from them is emblematic of how much he has also embraced being himself.
“I think it speaks to his practice of elevating everyday materials, which is a key part of his artistic practice, alongside his willingness to experiment,” Davis said. “Sometimes people have a hard time with abstract work, but Carey’s work is really inviting and joyful—it’s there to be explored and discovered, not preach or be esoteric.”
The open-ended nature of his work stems from the risks that come with being an artist and skater, which, according to Lynch, often run at odds to each other due to the physical and long-term damage that skating could cause.
“Doing both allows me to be reckless and feel free in how I express myself through art,” he said. “But there’s this risk in pursuing art when you’re skating—I mean I’ve had friends who have quit skating altogether because … if they break their wrist or something, they will never be able to paint again.”
That physical impact of skating is something Lynch has focused on in his work, but not necessarily the damage that can happen to a human body. Instead, he zeroes in on the destruction of the gear.
“Lately I have been drawn to painting on shoes, and that’s a direct result of skateboarding—I mean skating really just destroys shoes over time,” he said. “So it feels natural to take what would just normally be waste and reclaim it and do something new and fresh with it.”
Lynch has found a path to expression that he said thrives on the Central Coast. Perhaps, more importantly, it allows him to merge his two passions together in a way that brings him more creative inspiration than he ever could have imagined.
“It’s something you can’t get out of the everyday things like a 9-to-5 job” Lynch said. “Whatever I do in skateboarding or in art ultimately only results in my own pain or pleasure, and there’s not really anything more freeing than that.” Δ
Freelancer Adrian Vincent Rosas is finally going to give skateboarding a try after saying he would for the last two years. Reach him at arosas@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Spring Arts Annual 2023.