Malia Santos: Painting Stories on Surfboards

The morning light filters through the open garage door of Malia Santos's Haleiwa studio, catching the edges of a dozen surfboards leaning against the wall. Each one tells a different story—an eight-foot longboard swirled with deep blues and seafoam greens, a shortboard exploding with sunset oranges and purples, a fish design tracing the delicate patterns of coral polyps beneath the waves. This is where Malia Santos, one of the North Shore's most sought-after surfboard artists, transforms blank canvases of foam and fiberglass into narratives about place, memory, and the ocean that shapes both.

"Every board comes with a story," Malia says, running her hand along a freshly glassed nine-footer. "Sometimes the surfer brings it. Sometimes the ocean tells me what it needs to say." It's this approach—equal parts craft and conversation—that has made Malia's custom surfboard art a fixture in the North Shore artist collective, where surf culture and fine art meet in studios, galleries, and oceanfront workshops along the seven-mile miracle.

From Canvas to Foam: An Unconventional Path

Malia didn't set out to become a surfboard artist. Born and raised in Haleʻiwa, she grew up between two worlds—her Filipino grandmother's house on the mauka side of Kamehameha Highway, and the beach where her father taught surfing to tourists and locals alike. Art was always present. Her grandmother painted watercolors of the mountains. Her father shaped boards in the backyard, teaching her to see the curves and contours before the resin ever touched the foam.

After studying fine art at UH Mānoa, Malia returned to the North Shore, unsure how to make a living as an artist in a place where rent climbs higher each year and the creative economy runs on passion more than paychecks. She took a job at a surf shop, fixing dings and doing basic glassing work. One day, a regular customer asked if she could paint his board—not just a logo, but something that meant something.

"I painted his daughter's name in wave script, surrounded by the plumeria flowers she'd loved as a kid. When he picked it up, he cried. That's when I knew this wasn't just about making boards pretty—it was about making meaning visible."

The Alchemy of Resin: Technique and Patience

Working with resin on surfboards is not forgiving. Unlike acrylic or oil paints on canvas, resin has a working window—thirty minutes, maybe forty-five if you're lucky and the trade winds cooperate. Once it starts to cure, you're done. No second chances. No painting over mistakes. This is part of what draws Malia to the medium.

"Resin teaches you to commit," she explains, mixing pigments in small cups lined along her worktable. "You have to see the whole design in your head before you start. You pour, you tilt, you guide the color where it wants to go—but you never control it completely. That's the ocean in it. That's why it works on boards."

Her process begins with a blank shaped board, sanded smooth and ready for its first layer of glass. Some shapers send boards her way before the final glass job. Others bring finished boards for a top layer of resin art. Either way, Malia starts by listening—to the surfer's story, to the board's dimensions and intended use, to the feeling she gets when she runs her hand along its rails.

Then comes the color work. Malia mixes her own pigments, layering translucent tints to build depth. A wave isn't just blue—it's cobalt and turquoise and midnight and foam-white, all moving together, all catching light differently depending on the angle. She pours the resin in strategic spots, tilts the board to let gravity pull the colors across the surface, uses brushes and palette knives to guide edges and create texture. Sometimes she adds inclusions—pieces of rice paper with Hawaiian patterns, fragments of nets found on the beach, actual sand from the break where the surfer learned to ride.

Every Board Holds a Memory

One of Malia's most meaningful commissions came from a woman whose husband had recently passed. He'd been a lifelong surfer, and his old longboard sat in their garage, unridden, a reminder too painful to look at but too precious to discard. She brought it to Malia with a request: transform it into something she could hang on her wall, something that honored his memory without making her feel like she was living in a shrine.

Malia painted the board in sunset colors—the golds and reds and purples of late afternoon at Sunset Beach, the husband's favorite break. She incorporated his favorite Hawaiian saying, "Nānā i ke kumu" (look to the source), in subtle lettering that emerged only when light hit the board at certain angles. Around the rails, she added small marine life—the honu (sea turtle), the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa (reef triggerfish), the creatures he'd spent a lifetime watching beneath the waves.

"When she picked it up, she said it felt like he was still here, but not in a sad way," Malia recalls. "She said it felt like the best parts of him—the joy, the aloha, the presence—were captured in something she could see every day. That's what this art form can do. It holds memory. It holds love."

Building the North Shore Artist Community

Malia is part of a growing community of makers on the North Shore—artists, shapers, glassers, craftspeople who understand that this work is about more than individual success. On First Friday evenings in Haleʻiwa, you'll find her at pop-up shows alongside other local artists, boards propped against gallery walls next to paintings, photographs, and sculptures. The conversation between mediums feels natural here, where the line between functional object and fine art has always been blurred by the demands of place.

She collaborates regularly with local shapers, learning how different board designs demand different artistic approaches. A high-performance shortboard needs bold, energetic patterns that mirror the aggressive turns and aerials it's designed for. A classic noserider calls for something more contemplative—soft gradients, ocean horizons, the meditative quality of glide and trim. Malia's resin painting technique adapts to honor the craft that came before hers.

"We all respect the board," she says. "The shaper spends hours getting the rocker right, the rails perfect. My job is to add another layer of story without disrespecting their work. It's collaborative, even when we're working separately."

The Reality of Making Art on the North Shore

Making a living as a Hawaii resin artist on the North Shore isn't easy. Between the high cost of living, the seasonal nature of surf tourism, and the unpredictability of creative work, Malia supplements her custom board commissions with workshops where she teaches resin art basics to visitors and locals alike. She sells smaller pieces—resin-coated wooden wall art, coasters, jewelry—at local markets. She takes on commercial work when it aligns with her values, designing boards for surf brands that want authentic North Shore collaborations.

The work is physically demanding, too. Resin fumes require ventilation and protective gear. The repetitive motions of sanding and polishing take a toll on shoulders and wrists. The mental pressure of working with unforgiving materials, where one mistake can ruin hours of preparation, creates its own stress. But Malia wouldn't trade it.

"This is what it means to be a working artist here. You hustle. You teach. You take the commercial gigs. But you also get to wake up, walk to the beach before your first commission, and remember why you're doing this. The ocean refills what the work takes out."

Where the Art Is Going

Malia is currently experimenting with incorporating more traditional Hawaiian patterns into her work—kapa designs, tapa cloth motifs, the geometric precision of ancestral artisans. She's also exploring how to make her practice more sustainable, researching bio-based resins and non-toxic pigments that won't leach into the ocean when boards inevitably break or wash up on shore.

She dreams of mentoring young artists, especially young women and Native Hawaiian keiki who don't see themselves represented in the surf art world. She wants to teach not just technique but the business side—how to price your work fairly, how to negotiate with galleries, how to protect your creative energy while still making rent.

"Art isn't just about making beautiful things," she says. "It's about creating pathways for the next generation. It's about showing people that you can stay in the place you love, do the work you love, and build something meaningful—not despite the challenges, but because of them."