“I started surfing when I was 12, and I started painting when I was about 6,” Koniakowsky said. The artist, now in his late 50s, lives in Carlsbad with his wife and daughters. Moving to Southern California was an easy sell for Koniakowsky, who fell in with it on visits to relatives in Los Angeles. “I saw the West Coast as a Mecca for creativity, and surfing of course,” Koniakowsky wrote in an email.

The San Diego County lifestyle so informs Koniakowsky’s work that it is hard to imagine him anywhere that doesn’t have a tropical flavor. And his art continues to make waves. Koniakowsky’s work is currently showcased internationally and in galleries extending from Florida to California as well as Hawaii and Puerto Rico. He also frequents art festivals, both locally and around the world. “Art in the Pines” in La Jolla and “Taste of Del Mar” are two local dates on his calendar. He also has several appearances scheduled this summer in Hawaii as well as in Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Another measure of his success is his high-profile fans.

He counts Pittsburgh Steelers strong safety Troy Polamalu as one of them. Polamalu is known even to nonsports fans by his massive head of long, curly hair which may explain why he was recently featured in a series of shampoo commercials.

The hard-hitting football player of Samoan descent spends time in the off-season at his home in La Jolla. Koniakowsky remembers the process of doing about 25 pieces for the star athlete, including large commissioned paintings and painted surfboards. An interior designer picked most of the furnishings, but Polamalu, who shares Koniakowsky’s love of the ocean and surfing, wanted to select the paintings for his “incredible gym” himself.

“Polamalu said ‘I want to hand-pick the art that is going to be up when I’m working out, when I’m training, because I want something that I have a real connection to,’ ” Koniakowsky recalls. That shared connection for the ocean-inspired art that Koniakowsky creates resonates even in his lesser-known clients. “Eight out of 10 people that buy my work are people that have a pretty consistent connection to the ocean,” Koniakowsky said. For many children of the ’60s, surfing represents a seminal part of their lives. Koniakowsky is no different. “All of a sudden after the movie Gidget, there were surfers everywhere,” he said. “The Beach Boys were singing about it on the radio, and so, you know, we all jumped in.”

This led him to make surfboards. He honed his artistic talent as he painted and designed logos for them. Beyond music and movies, Surfer Magazine, where he saw the work of art director Rick Griffin, was also a big influence for Koniakowsky. “[Griffin] was a great artist, and he really fueled the fires of my artistic inspiration,” he said. That inspiration led him to get formal training in both fine and commercial art, which led to a successful career in advertising.

Koniakowsky’s commercial career includes more than 300 national and international awards for his creative work—done for many Fortune 500 companies. In 2002, he decided to change direction and devote more time to art and surfing. The fine art he does now doesn’t stop him from taking on occasional commercial projects. “I never got out of marketing,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got some really interesting projects going on now. Some people think that money ruins art—I don’t believe that.”

He teamed up with award-winning sports photographer Aaron Chang to open a new art gallery in Solana Beach a little over a year ago to display and sell ocean-inspired art—whether photographs, paintings, surfboards, or ukuleles. Both men are avid surfers and had previously owned art galleries in Solana Beach. Koniakowsky often works at the gallery on Sundays where he and Chang try to immerse visitors in an experience that goes beyond sight. “We wanted to make it experiential,” he wrote. “Not only visual but including the other senses as well. For instance, we employ tropical fragrances and native island music.”

He does most of his fine art in oil paints, but practical considerations sometimes require him to use different materials. “I get involved in all media,” he said. “I’d say the primary media I use is oil, but I paint surfboards. You can’t use oil paint on surfboards, because, more often than not, they are getting coated with fiberglass over the top of my painting. And the fiberglass conflicts with oil-based paints.” His designs currently adorn the custom surfboards that decorate Billabong stores nationwide.

He has three major styles of paintings. First, he has a series of tropical wavescapes. It has an overall warm, rich and muted palette and is inspired by islands near Southeast Asia. His second style is California landscapes in an impressionist style. His third style is graphic collage, inspired by his years as a designer.

“You’ll see a lot of influence of all the years that I spent as a graphic designer and art director in my painting,” he said. “In my surfboards, you’ll see Polynesian graphics, icons, tribal shapes that are just there because it is design. It breaks away from the scenic —the depiction of a scene—into something that is graphic.” “I like that, and I just meld it in. And then other times, my goal as a painter is just to depict a really luscious tropical scene.” Whatever the style, there is no question that Koniakowsky speaks to people with salt water in their veins.

His drive to catch the perfect wave on a surfboard also informs his drive to catch it on canvas. “I am on a quest to perfect this scene, looking into a wave from the channel, light coming through the lip of the wave in a stained-glass effect,” he wrote. For Koniakowsky, surfing—and art—is for life.