Mystic With A Brush by Patty Baralt

Christian Riese Lassen: Mystic With A Brush
Hawaiian surfer and environmentalist is both an idealistic artist and a savvy business owner“The world opened up and I was compelled into it. The world is my palette, theatre, audience and earthly surrender to paradise and the sea.” So declares Hawaiian painter Christian Riese Lassen. In this case, the romantic style actually is the man, both in his language and his remarkable paintings.There is an unapologetic idealism in his voice when he says things like, “My love of preserving the world in all its glory is my dream come true.” The same unabashed romanticism is evident in the credo on his website, www.lassenart.com: “I believe in making a difference through my art. In my work, I seek to act as a messenger, alerting people all over the world to the deterioration of the global environment, and to encourage a greater understanding and respect for the world’s diverse cultures.”Equally passionate is Lassen’s art, consisting mainly of seascapes and marine life. His oeuvre covers a range of styles from lushly romanticized to photo-realistic…with occasional side trips into neo-impressionism, and even an occasional foray into abstract modernism. But Lassen is best known for his idealized, dreamlike, or even fantasy-drenched images. These are a genuine expression of a personality that comes honestly by its passions…and that leads us to Lassen himself.A tanned, muscular athlete with shoulder-length blonde hair, Lassen grew up in Maui and looks as if he’d be equally at home on a surfboard or the cover of a glossy romance novel. In this case, appearances are not deceiving. When this onetime professionally ranked surfer is not riding the waves or wielding a brush, he might be found composing music, writing essays for his books, making regular network and cable TV appearances, producing films, or lobbying for pro-environmental policies through his nonprofit SeaVision Foundation.