45 1317 Regatta Drive $715,000 1633 Verrazzano Drive $659,000 2004 Ashland Court $1,895,000 2016 Deer Island Lane $769,000 1720 Drysdale Drive • 910-256-6111 • www.landfallrealty.com www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM with working with watercolors because with that you have to work really fast.” In the North Lumina Avenue studio of Oleg Connell boards are transformed into colorful, detailed works. Adopted from Magadan, Siberia, when he was 7, Connell says he has only ever taken one art class and one drawing class but that his love for art is rooted in the doodling he started while living in a Siberian orphanage. “I started drawing when I was in the orphanage because I would always get put in time out and I would do nothing but sit in some-thing like a cubicle,” Connell says. “I was really big into drawing wings and angels. I had never been raised in any religion and didn’t even know what that was but I always drew this woman with her kid, like Mary and Jesus.” From age seven to 18 Connell spent his life in and out of surf-ing and art. Moving with his foster family, he attended a different high school each of the four years. It was during his senior year at Hoggard High School that Connell says he got serious about his art and a natu-ral marriage of his skills and love of surfing led him to surfboard art. “I have surfed my whole life and have always been around it so it started out with me just doodling on my friends’ surfboards,” he says. “Then people see them and ask me to do boards and suddenly it became a way I could make money and have fun doing it.” After an eight-month sojourn in Central America where he painted large murals in restaurants and hos-tels in exchange for food and shelter, Connell returned to Wrightsville Beach and now has a steady stream of board art commissions. With a love for traveling Connell hopes his art can take him around the world.
2014-6
To see the actual publication please follow the link above