“Who doesn’t love a skateboard on the wall?” asks Lochlan Sutherland. “It’s always a talking point, whether it’s for the old-school skater or a collector or a young mother. I want people to be happy and have that nostalgic feeling of being young.”
Sutherland – otherwise known as Rholtsu – makes skateboard art. He combines his passion for skating with the off-kilter beauty of coloured resin to produce pieces that create a striking first impression with his audience. The finished works are translucent boards with butterflies, scorpions and other specimens suspended in the resin, creating a striking effect.
But what’s the key to his artistic practice?
A painstaking creative process
Despite a lifelong love of skating, Sutherland has only been making his resin skateboard art for four years. He’s admittedly new to the art world and is mostly self-taught when it comes to working with resin, which involves plenty of trial and error.
“I’ve had to learn everything from the get-go, I’ve watched a lot of Youtube tutorials,” he says. “I’ve also ruined a lot of boards. I’ve thrown a lot of pieces out just because it’s not what I wanted.”
Resin is a liquid polymer that Sutherland pours painstakingly into the cast over the object to be encased.
“It takes a whole day of different layers to set the skateboard shape,” he says. “If you just pour it in one go, it’s a liquid to begin with so it’ll all just rise to the surface.”
From curing to sanding to polishing, it can take up to 10 weeks to complete one piece.
Tapping memory and emotion to create lasting impressions
Sutherland’s pieces are heavily rooted in ideas of nostalgia, evoking memories and emotions from an enduring passion for skating.
“At six or seven my old man got me my first board,” Sutherland says. “I’ve always loved it, it’s always been there for me. There was nothing else, really. Skating was a passion and I feel it’s getting even stronger now after creating these pieces as well.”
Family is the other big inspiration that comes through in Sutherland’s art. His works are named after women in his life – his mother, aunts, grandmas – and custom pieces are often commissioned with someone in mind.
“It brings back memories for people,” says Sutherland. “I’ve created wedding bouquets, I’ve created boards for people that have lost someone, captured special life moments. It just speaks to everyone in their own way.”
Alongside the emotional connection to the art, Sutherland’s visual style immediately leaves an impression with people and lasts long in the imagination.
“The butterflies are just so delicate and really speak to a lot of people,” he says. “The Jan has over 60 butterflies encased within it, or the morphidae one I do with all those beautiful blue ones, they just pop off the light. I don’t think you can go past pieces like that.”
As an emerging artist, Sutherland is still balancing growing demand with the commercial reality of art.
“I’m an electrician as well,” he says. “I wake up at 4am – 3.30am sometimes – to work on the boards and then I’m working till 9pm at night. I guess you could say I’ve got two full-time jobs at the moment, plus a young child as well and a beautiful partner. But it’s my passion so no-one’s going to stop me from doing this and I’m doing it for the love of it. I feel like I’ve got more energy now.”
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