Wilma Johnson

Artist Wilma Johnson was a neo-naturist performance artist in her twenties and an eathmother in an Irish fishing village in her thirties. By her forties, she found the sudden desire to become a surfer so she moved to Biarritz with her family where she swapped painting for a longboard. Here, she set up the Mamas Surf Club, a group of women who, like her, choose cold, wet neoprene suits over cocktail dresses. Her new book, Surf Mama, which is also illustrated with her art, tells the story of how she discovered life on a board.

As a grand entrance to this year’s festival, Wilma is going to paddle up the eustary on a surfboard and land on the river bank in a wetsuit to be greeted by her daughter Daisy Tallulah, who will be singing La Mer, by Charles Trenet, (written on a train in 1946 on SNCF toilet paper.)
With the addition of a bathrobe, she will read a short excerpt from Surf Mama, then answer questions.

As an extra treat, Wilma is planning to put on a miniature ‘exhibition’ of the paintings in the book, in the form of images on matchboxes, which will be given away at the end of the event before she leaves, again on the board to a reprise of La Mer.

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