Surf Waves

Narrative by Charles Leech, Posted January 23, 2026

Image courtesy of the author

Semioticians analyze symbols, so for this series, we’ve asked 25 of our semio colleagues from around the world to explicate the symbolism of… one of their own tattoos.

My surf wave tattoo is full-sleeve, but done by two different artists, years apart: I had the upper sleeve done about 15 years ago and the lower sleeve completed about 4 years ago. They’re my fourth and fifth tats, respectively, but I now think of it as a single piece.

When I started the project, around 2010, I became aware that my other tattoos were (are) black ink executions, and I wanted some vibrant colour in my life (parking aside for a moment the addictive nature of tattoos in general). Most of my other tattoos were (are) pretty bleak, too — religious-themed visuals that spoke to suffering and pain; my third was a textual meditation on eternally insatiable human nature, and how miserable that makes us (me): like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul. I decided I needed something 180 degrees from that: my happy place, a celebration of joy, of abandon. What was the very best place in the world, for me, where I’m the absolute happiest? Of excitement, of spontaneity? It’s in waves, and the bigger the better.

The tattoos also stand as a symbol of three years’ living in Australia in the late ’90s, where I was able to spend almost every weekend blissing out in the surf at Surfer’s Paradise, and Currumbin Alley. I fully embraced a grad-student surfer lifestyle there, with a roof rack on my ’72 Ford Escort to lash down my board as I drove south from Brisbane without shoes on. There was no question that I was the shittiest Canadian surfer who ever paddled out, but god I loved it. Even today, simply bobbing up and down in beach breaks without a board, maneuvering to dip my head right under the crest of waves as they tumble over, is still the best thing in the world. I can do that for hours and hours. I could never ride a short board again, but perhaps one day I’ll get back up on a longboard in the right conditions.

I’ve always loved Japanese culture, art, and design, so having waves done in the ukiyo-e style seemed like a no-brainer to me. I hesitated for moment out of a concern for cultural appropriation, but I believe that Japanese culture understands and respects the power and beauty of the ocean like no other, and I carry deep respect for that understanding and respect.

I’ve read somewhere that everyone is either a mountain person or an ocean person, and I’m 100% an ocean person. I’m fascinated by oceans’ size, and their seemingly never-ending list of contradictions: their complexity and their simplicity, their stability and their chaos, their permanence and impermanence, their tranquility and fury. I have that all on and in me forever.

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