I grew up on an Air Force base, so my friends and I made lots of pictures of aeroplanes.
I remember looking for better ways to draw a plane, and always wanting my picture to be the best.

My family were very supportive of my emerging talent, and used my drawing of a sailing ship for the family Christmas card in 1963. There was always a heap of paper on the kitchen table, and a good supply of pens and pencils.

Above: Sailing ship, c. 1963, age 5

I didn't really see eye-to-eye with my art teachers in high school...

I kept right on drawing whatever took my fancy at the time - surfing, fishing, cars, motorbikes, etcetera, and it didn't really fit into what they were trying to teach us.

So that was more-or-less the end of formal art education for me. But not the end of my artistic endeavours...

I got a couple of cartoons published in the school magazine, but eventually my stuff just got banned. So then I became a guerilla artist - I'd whip up a cartoon while I was supposed to be learning formulae, post it on the noticeboard at lunchtime, and half the school would get to see it before a teacher would come running down the corridor and rip it down.

I left school in late 1975 and immediately started work in a veterinary laboratory by day, and a surfboard factory at night.

The job with the vet was only short-lived, but I continued to work in the surfboard industry until my spinal injury in 2006.

I started as a surfboard sprayer, although I had already shaped a few boards and glassed them myself at home. I remember my brother being a little upset when I glassed one in the bedroom we shared because it was too cold in the garage!
When I started at Macquarrie Surfboards I was getting paid three dollars to spray basic designs, and five dollars for murals, which I thought was pretty good.
We drank a lot of beer while we worked, and if we got too drunk to do the job properly we'd jump in the boss' fishing boat and head out onto the bay to catch snapper and sharks.

Having a job meant having money in pocket, and I was soon able to buy my first "proper" camera, and painting and drawing took a back seat for the next ten years as I learnt about photography and film-making.

In 1978 I got a chance to enter Swinburne Film and Television School, where I spent the next three years.

It took me a while to get the hang of it all, but in last eighteen months all we did was make films, which was fantastic.
We made some good stuff, some OK stuff, and a lot of stuff that we'd all rather forget, but most of the time we had a whole lot of fun.

After leaving film school, I worked in various facets of the independent and main-stream film industry for about seven years.
The highlights of this period were probably playing Robert Vaughan's stunt double in a car chase across the desert in 1981; supplying the horse noises for the movie Phar Lap in 1984; and co-producing the seminal surf video "Savage Cuts" with Peter Kirkhouse in 1987.

In the late 80's I was trying to write a feature film script, living in the bush outside Melbourne, Victoria. One Sunday morning, an old friend rang up from his place a couple of ridges away.

"Hey Norv, we've got a lot of old paint and some blank canvas over here, would you like to come over and paint a picture?"

Since that day in 1987, I have made countless artworks in many different media.

I have had a dozen or so solo exhibitions, been represented in many group shows, and painted a number of large murals.

My first big solo exhibition was held in the warehouse of Data Express, the motorcycle courier company where I worked. I exhibited over 70 paintings, which sold very well indeed.

Above: "I Live to Ride", Acrylic on convas, 1988

I have maintained a constant output since then, as well as working in surfboard manufacture, motorcycle couriering, construction, fabric design, removals and other work.
My addresses in that time have included Melbourne, Breamlea, Torquay, and Bacchus Marsh, in Victoria; Lancelin, Western Australia; the Gold Coast, Queensland; various northern beach suburbs in Sydney; and Byron Bay, New South Wales, where I have lived since 1995.

In the early years of this millenium, I also developed skimboard designs, and I continue to promote advanced skimboarding in Australia.

In September 2006, I sustained a devastating injury to my spinal cord in a cycling accident. Fortunately I have recovered sufficiently well to continue my painting.

I firmly believe the most important thing in life is to have a go at making your dreams come true. Life is too short to get caught up in the frustration of knowing you could have followed your ambition, but let the chance go by.

Norval Watson, Byron Bay, updated May 2009.