Tom Seager - Carve Fin Art
Hi, I’m Tom Seager and I’m an artist and animator based in Braunton, North Devon. I print bold longboard fin design linocuts and more recently, I’ve been creating endless surf loop animations and artworks, drawing inspiration from my passion for surfing and life by the sea.
For me, surfing is a chance to engage with the natural world and tune into that specific moment. Just being right there and zoning out from whatever else is happening in life, paying full attention to what’s going on at that particular time.
It can be pretty mind-blowing, the way the elements all come together so perfectly to give you those magical moments, like when you’re sliding down a glassy peeling right, the full moon rising and reflecting off the rippling wave in front of you, as the big red sun is setting over the horizon, glistening on the water behind you. Times like those, shared with the people you hold closest to you are what makes life feel so special.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect experiences like those though. Sometimes it’s just the simple way the light reflects on the face of a wave, or the way the raindrops look as they splash on the sea's surface in a storm. It’s about giving yourself a chance to slow down and notice those little things and see the beauty in them. In a world that moves at such a rapid pace these days, where our attention is constantly being distracted and there’s so much negativity, I think it’s really important to be able to tune out of that and into something more wholesome to help nourish and feed the soul.
I think art is very similar in that sense of mindfulness too, whether that’s the attention and focus that it takes when carving the lino, drawing out each of the individual frames of a sequence, or the way you can get lost watching an endless loop animation, as your mind gets captured by it and it’s almost hypnotising.
When I was growing up, I remember flicking through skateboard magazines and being fascinated by the double-page sequence shots. The way the photos were seamlessly edited and stitched together to make it look like one image of a whole trick and my latest artworks are very much a throwback to that, based on the frames from my animations. I love how you can create that sense of movement and flow and almost tell a story with a still image.
Having moved to Braunton (from the south coast) around a year and a half ago (to be closer to more regular surf and follow my passion for that), I’m now really excited to be about to start building a little garden studio, where I’ll have a dedicated space that I can go and create in. Hopefully that means there’ll be a lot more artwork coming from me in the not too distant future, but in the meantime, if you want to learn more about my artwork, you can find me at the following places online, https://www.tomseagerart.comhttps://www.carvefinart.com or on Instagram @tomseagerart @carvefinart