Felicity Palmateer  “Skin Deep”

At the end of 2018, Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer was going to post a video called Skin Deep that she had been working on for 3 years.

In her own words, “a work of art” in which she surfed naked, combining her two passions – surfing and art – and showing “the connection with the ocean.”

Skin Deep begins when in 2015 Felicity Palmateer came up with the idea of ​​surfing nude as an art project.

Then there were three years of recording with Phantom and Red Epic in Fiji, Hawaii, the south and north of Western Australia and the north of New South Wales. A recording that was not easy, since if it is difficult to find good waves with few people, the producer assures that finding them empty is almost impossible. The surfer said that “it is difficult to record someone naked without seeing everything, so we have many false shots that I hope never see the light.”

This is how they managed to put together a 4 minute clip that she is very proud of.
They showed it to friends, family, the WSL and sponsors and started creating the launch. But one sponsor (they didn’t want to say the name) got off at the last minute because he didn’t like the product.

“People had surfed naked before, but maybe not to this point. I use surfing and art as ways to meditate, motivate myself, escape. I feel more confident when I’m in the water or creating. Being able to combine it in Skin Deep has been very satisfying ”.

“For me it is a work of art. People will have an opinion. That doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong. I’ve always said it: if it’s going to generate debate and challenge people, that’s a bit of the goal of art, right? There will always be someone who doesn’t like it and that’s fine. “