Moira Gil: 'painting is like meditating'

The sound of the waves are the soundtrack to Moira Gil's life. Since her beachside childhood in Argentina learning to surf at her father's surf school, she has been tuned to the sound. As an adult, she took her surfboard around the world as a professional surfer, and, for her, it was the logical progression of listening to the waves.

"Surfing is my home," Gil says. "All of my family surfs."

Surfing is what brought her to a little seaside town in India, one of the only towns in the country where she could surf in a bikini, she says. But there is where she found another part of herself, a part that she did not know she was even looking for.

"I met this artist who was doing amazing work, and there was a piece of his art I wanted to buy. But when I came back to buy it, the one I wanted was sold. And this man, this artist, he didn't talk at all, so I said to his nephew there at the store that I wished he could teach me," she explains. "The nephew said, 'He can.' And I decided to stay an extra 15 days to learn."

She sat on the floor 10 hours a day beside the man she called Guru Gi. And he taught her the intricate painting technique of using hand-mixed watercolors to paint on fabric. She had always painted for fun, but her strokes were big, wild, bold. This was small, slow, intricate. And there was no talking, just gestures.

Gil says that her teacher "explained that painting is like meditating. When you paint, you're in the present. And if you would like to talk, then you need to take a break from painting."

When she left two weeks later, she had a new painting technique, which she has now developed into her own style, using acrylics and oils. She also uses self-stretched circular canvases.

"I let go of my mind. It's not my brush that matters, but the wrist. And I paint from the heart."

Most of her subjects grow out of her yoga meditation or her love of the natural environment - or both. One painting might be the view of a wave curling; another will be more about spiritual motifs. There is always a central image, but the paintings are often filled with layers of images. She enjoys using a lot of color and movement, and with her schedule, her paintings can take months to complete.

It's been a few years since she sat beside Guru Gi, and since then, she has moved to Charleston, opened Shaka Surf School at Folly Beach with business partner Jenny Brown, and decided to split time between here and her Argentinean home in the off season.

But now, just as waves are her soundtrack, paint colors her world. She sees the two pursuits as two sides of her creativity.

"I feel free when I surf or I paint. I feel myself. I don't have limits, and that freedom is what pushes me."