Martyn Worthington is Australia's best known surfboard artist. He has produced countless images for thousands of surfers over several decades and is still going strong.

Martyn and Blindboy sat on the steps in the Clear Surfboard factory on Sydney's Northern Beaches and reminisced.

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Swellnet: Who are some of the people you have worked with over the years?
Martyn Worthington: Starting with HB, Hot Buttered, with Terry Fitz back in the day at the cottage in Mitchell Road, Brookvale where Terry and his wife originally lived. I was working at Channel 9 and I used to go in the evening and spray boards, that was in the early seventies, the very early seventies, but never a full time living until later on, the 1980s, it was a good time though it was a pretty inspired time. It was interesting.

After Terry I worked with Greg Clough at Aloha, it was changing then professional surfing was really going along, Tommy Carroll and Barton Lynch and those guys coming through. From there...I still do bits and pieces in advertising, other things, still painting. From there to Insight with Greg Webber who I had known for a while anyway, gee heaps of people, then just working for myself basically with Brad here at Clear Surfboards, but over the years millions of people, boards all over the place.

How did that original style you used in the early seventies develop? Where did that come from?
From my own painting, painting at home, painting, drawing, sketching at Art School, went to Art School and did that whole thing and I always had access to a lot of paint because I worked at Channel 9. I was a set designer and scenic artist too, so really my own style came from things that interested me, books that I had read. I was right into art history so there were influences of Surrealism, Dadaism and things. Fairly serious art influence now I think about it.

It seemed to me that your style became very influential and not just in surfing.
It was an organic thing it was pretty much surfing inspired in a way. It was relating that ocean fluidity with the spiritual thing that was around at the time so a lot of organic shapes, things flowing into each other, colours blending. Air brushing was so good, it was a revelation to find something that could do that easily, could actually blend colours and make things look transparent, layers of colour, clouds, water. It was an inspiration to have that at that time.  

I remember some of Terry's boards at the time. There must have been a huge amount of work in them.
Absolutely. The big thing was going to Hawaii for the November contests so he would want the full quiver air brushed. That was a rush and a lot of work but it was inspiring to force yourself to come up with different concepts for different boards and different colours for different boards and that expanded the whole vocabulary of the painting and it was out there, you know, people saw it, a lot of people saw it, and didn't want to copy necessarily they just wanted to do something that was inspiring.

So how has it evolved over time?
It went through all that organic hippy thing and it disappeared in the mid to late seventies and then it went very punk, a lot of freehand, a lot of brush painting. It wasn't as inspiring as the earlier days. It was more driven by things outside surfing like music and street culture and surfing was part of that, it has always been a cultural cutting edge. And that was the eighties. After that I think it went back to being a more inspired, a more spiritual thing inspired by water, people getting into all different things, surfing big waves, jet skis, that whole thing blew wide open and I think that's when......and also fashion, obviously fashion, Mambo and Reg Mombassa's stuff. It all flowed back into surfing and was expressed. Then of course kids have always painted on their boards, they're still doing it and I don't think they are going to stop anytime soon, so one of the things that is really inspiring is seeing what they do! All the boards that come in here for repairs, some of it is beautiful, it's awesome.

So is there any particular style coming into fashion at the moment?
It seems like we have just come out of another sort of post punk phase and there was a heavy metal gothic thing going on before that, now it's almost retro. A lot of it is colour tints but I am doing more mural work than I have done for years and years, whether they want to actually hang it on their walls or put it on a board and surf it they have the real thing that they can hang onto for ten years...in one piece, which is pretty hard now the way boards are glassed.

So how do you feel about having some of your best work end up on several pieces on the beach. 
I did a Hot Buttered, Terry shaped it. It was a monster, the full gun it was eight foot something and he took it to the Maldives and big day, first day, first wave, broke it in two. So he brought it back and we did this monstrous repair job, virtually remake the board, Brad did it all and I sprayed the mural back on it. It is a worry but I think about the old days and I am amazed at the stuff that has survived. You see it on the net and people bring it in and ask "Did you do this?"  I mean 1972, how has it made it to here?

And being resold at multiples of its original cost?
Absolutely, I think that has helped preserve them. The restoration thing has been good, there is a lot of craftsmanship in it. I know one particular guy, Levi on the Central Coast, if he restores a board it is immaculate. He does it to a standard I haven't seen the like of and he will do it to the worst to make it look the absolute best. If it's a Hot Buttered and he says "Can you put a mural on it?" I'll do it because it's the real thing as far as I am concerned.

Terry does some replicas these days do you work with him?
We're doing quite a lot of them, just that whole look, colour fades everything from just freehand phoenixes to ....before Christmas I did a Narrabeen car park with a dog on a bench looking towards the pool. So it's anything and everything still.

Did you ever do clothes?
I did quite a lot of t-shirt designs, some for Insight, some for Hot Buttered, but I was always more interested in the boards I really like doing that even after all this time. I still get a buzz when I pull all the tape off and it looks really good. 

And your paintings? Do you exhibit? 
No, but I've never had a problem, if work's there and people see it, I don't have any problem selling it. I'm not really worried about exhibiting. And also the boards, if you regard it as painting, some of the better stuff, which I do, then you are selling your art, you're exhibiting.

Never managed to have a retrospective and get them all in the same place?
Wouldn't that be fun! I suppose it's not impossible but you would have to have the cooperation of a lot of people. They are all over the place now. I've seen a couple that have turned up in pretty ritzy publications.

Anything that you would like to add?
I still really love doing what I do, so I hope that other people are going to follow in the footsteps as it were, though I don't plan to stop anytime soon. I want to keep painting, I don't get enough time to paint, you really need a studio and you need time so it's not that easy.....and you have to find time to get in the ocean too, that's where it all comes from.