With deep roots into the Dogtown movement of the 70’s, which changed skateboarding forever, Pat Ngoho stands as a Venice Beach icon. Immersed with monumental love for his art, he has entered a space so profound that even the word “art” cannot describe it.
Yeah, that was a total epiphany. I just got fed up with renting studios outside of my house and then I said: let’s do this! I had to get rid of all my furniture, all my fixtures, I completely changed my house around. But it felt really good, and it totally works because I feel like I need to be around the art all the time, because I’m eating off of it and I’m learning from it. I’m constantly growing with it. Now I can’t even imagine living in some other way, really.
First off, I am a big fan of German art and the early expressionists. And then the word art in America, it’s ridiculous. It’s been watered down so much. They use it everywhere. It’s like the art of the deal or the art of the pickle ball. And so, I felt that when you dig deeper into the word Kunst, originally, it was associated with knowledge and expertise and mastery, and I felt that it elevated fine art in it, and it was more in line with how I was looking at art. I also think these words, they do hold energy and they hold these other meanings that we may not see.
I think from the beginning. I actually have some pieces from when I was one and two years old, granted, they were scribbled and stuff but I see my style and my hand in there. I have an entire book of abstracts from when I was like five. When I was about six or seven, I lived at my grandmother’s, and I didn’t have a room, I just slept on the couch. So everyone would go to sleep in their rooms, and I had this big space to myself, like the living room. My grandmother put these little night lights up and I would just get up in the middle of the night and start drawing.
"Whether it be your skateboard or your paintbrushes, it’s like an extension of who you are."
I really didn’t come from an art culture family, I never went to museums. My first memory of being around art was when I was about 12. I would stay over at the Hosoi’s house and Ivan [Hosoi] was an artist. He had this converted storefront in L.A.. It was kind of this magical place. He had his art in there and it had a place for painting and he would just talk about art. I really liked Ivan’s work and what he was doing and his whole philosophy behind it.
When I think of like the ’70s, the images that come to my head are like, Jay [Adams] and Tony [Alva] skating a backyard pool and just how free that was and how renegade. They weren’t just skating in a pool, but they were bringing all this extra energy in there. It was all this very localized surf energy and then it was performance art in itself, right? Just the way they looked, the attitude they had, and the backdrop. And then even the photographers, Craig Stecyk, who was presenting it to the world. There’s a lot of people that contributed to skating, but what I feel was important to me, I have to say that Dogtown was probably the biggest influence. It was more like this movement and this era. It’s not really the brand, it was more like an art movement. Because it wasn’t really connected to anything like a brand that they’re selling. There was so much art behind it, visuals and writings, you know, from Stecyk and other people.
I think the Germans are really kind of doing some good stuff and they’ve been doing it for a long time, all through the ages. From post World War and also before that, with the Blaue Reiter movement and then Die Brücke, and then the artists of today, Jonathan Meese and Andrè Butzer, and the Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard. There’s some really amazing stuff coming out of Europe.
Recently I found this artist, her name is Hilma af Klint. She is from Sweden and technically she was the first abstract artist before Kandinsky, like by a few years. She was trying to create her own language through art and she was doing it with whatever form and color. Her work is really beautiful and it’s really large. And for whatever reason, she wasn’t really exhibiting in her lifetime, she was kind of secretive about her art. And she had mentioned in her will that she didn’t want her work to be seen until 20 years after she died. My interpretation is that maybe she felt the world wasn’t ready for it. That here’s this person painting in isolation who comes up with this whole visual language is really inspirational to me.
That is such a good question. I really toiled on that question. I have no idea. It’s like asking you, why do you skate? You just do it automatically but you never reflect. Do I skate for the same reason that Chris Russell skates? Like Chris and me we’re two different people. You can see it in the way we skate. We’re on two different missions. So I asked myself: why do I do art? I didn’t even really have a choice. When I was making a drawing at one or two years old, I think it’s something a bit more on a metaphysical level, where I’m doing the creative process to learn from it. It’s kind of like this internal teacher. The art itself, I’m learning from it. When you came to my studio, you saw the way I arranged the art. I put all these pieces up together and I think that there’s a synergy there. You’re even getting more out of it, I can’t completely explain it, but I feel that it beats me even deeper. At this point right now I’m not really motivated to sell the art if I don’t have to. Because I like having it around.
Totally. I think it’s a performance art that’s probably one of the greatest art forms that humans have ever done. Because it can be done in so many different ways. Even within bowl skating, there’s so many different interpretations and versions within that one genre. It does kind of invite so many people to do this and to be inventive and to go in a different direction, to invent tricks and try new things and wear whatever clothes.
Historically, it’s been painting and skateboarding. Skateboarding is a total free expression and I think for me this also applies to painting. Look, you were just at a contest where everyone’s skating the same way and actually is trying to go for points and there’s still a huge range of types of skaters out there. I’m looking at skating as a way to develop myself and to learn about myself and then also trying to choreograph. I mean with Combi Bowl, where you and Chris Miller won it and both of you guys had these wonderful flowing lines and tricks that were done, every trick that you guys did was so masterful. It’s like a lifetime to get to where you get to. You have to perfect it, and not only, you have to push through that into a new place, into a new area. And that’s the hard part that people don’t really understand. A lot of people just copy what everyone else is doing. But to break through, this new kind of knowledge and wisdom and mastering, is something that I feel like I connect to and I strive for it. I think it’s deeply meditative and there’s this deep connection that you have with yourself and with the medium – whether it be your skateboard or your paintbrushes – that it’s like an extension of who you are. I think there’s a beauty in that, that when someone gets to that level that they are able to transcend into something different and beyond what we thought was possible, and that’s what inspires everybody. I think there’s something extra special and extra human there that nothing else on the planet really kind of has, you know, that is the special thing of what’s happening in the creative process.
