Damian Fulton is an American painter, cartoonist and film director based in the Greater Los Angeles area. He is known for paintings depicting the surf culture of Los Angeles' South Bay combined with urban and pop-culture imagery, and as the creator of the BMX comic strip Radical Rick, which ran in BMX Plus! magazine.
Early life Fulton grew up in Irvine and Fountain Valley in Southern California, and was first exposed to surf culture at Huntington Beach, where he and his brother would ride their bicycles to the beach to surf. He studied art at California State University, Fullerton.
Radical Rick Fulton created the Radical Rick comic strip in 1979, after a riding friend who worked for BMX Plus! magazine introduced him to its editors. The strip, following a young BMX rider and characters such as MX Mug, ran in BMX Plus! from 1979 until 1993, and later in reruns, comprising more than 150 episodes. The character became a recurring figure in 1980s BMX culture, and Fulton later collaborated with Haro Bikes on a signature Radical Rick bicycle.
Advertising and entertainment career In 1984 Fulton moved to Los Angeles to join the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he became a creative director and worked on campaigns for brands including Hot Wheels, Barbie, Kraft, Pepsi, Chevron and Toyota, receiving industry awards including a Cannes Lion and a D&AD award. He also served as vice president of creative development at Marvel Productions and as a senior designer for Disney, creating commemorative artwork for Disneyland's 50th anniversary. Early in his career he designed a poster for the Op Pro surfing contest and created other comic strips, including The Shred Brothers, as well as comic material for Snowboarder magazine.
Fine art Fulton's paintings depict scenes of Los Angeles surf culture that combine beach subjects with city, motorcycle, hot-rod and pop-culture elements rather than idealized coastal landscapes, an approach Surfer magazine termed his "urban surf art". Writing in Easy Reader, Rachel Reeves described his work as "elaborate, highly interpretable stories about the motorcycle, car, and surf cultures of the coast that incubated him". His paintings have been the subject of features in surf publications including Surfer, The Surfer's Journal and The Inertia. His mural work has been covered by the street-art publication Brooklyn Street Art.
He is among the thirty surf-graphic artists profiled in the anthology Surf Graphics (Korero Books, 2012).
In July 2014, La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles presented "Rad!". The exhibition was also covered by the cycling-culture publication The Radavist.
Film Credited as Damian X. Fulton. He directed the 2025 Christmas film The Great Christmas Snow-In, starring Joey Lawrence and Amanda Fuller.
Personal life Fulton lives in El Segundo with his wife, with whom he has four children.
Exhibitions Rad! (35th anniversary of Radical Rick), La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, 2014
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