Tahiti Pehrson grew up with a dad that was an art teacher from the Bay Area and and a Mom that was also a very accomplished artist. Since he came from a family of artists he grew up painting, mostly Oil Paintings. At the age of 14, he started skateboarding and became highly influenced by skateboard graphics and Surrealism. During that period was when he really started to apply himself as an artist. After traveling to Mexico, China and then on to Europe he collected a wide variety of influences. He immersed himself in the detail of the forbidden city, the flow of Ink painting, Mexican folk art , The Van Gogh Museum and the Pompidou.

He moved to San Francisco to attend classes at the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 90’s leaving school after a year and a half. He began to do street art and employ the use of cut out stickers in news boxes. This was a way of circumventing the critic culture of school while stealing attention from corporate advertising. It felt good for art to be dangerous or have a thrill, it made art feel alive to him. He then began making stencils for quick employment and tried to practice art that felt counter to the street art movement at that time. He met other like-minded artists like PEZ, MIZE and PNEU and formed a little crew that would go on painting excursions. He had this idea of doing shows with just the stencils before they were painted and also started to do some three dimensional and layered work, what led to his debut exhibit at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco in 2005. Later that same year the show went to the Atelier Cardenas Bellanger in Paris. The fact that he had an exhibit showing half a block away from the Pompidou he felt he had made some cyclical progress and sustained momentum.

Along the way he was doing album, music and art related works for artists such as Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom as Well as receiving commissions from XL Recordings London for portrait of artists such as Thom Yorke, The White Stripes, Adele and MIA among others. He also produced Skateboard graphics for Adrenalin, Toy Machine, Familia-South Africa and Telegraph skateboards companies.

Today his work can be seen on 24th street in San Francisco. The piece was commissioned by Gavin Newsom and the City Arts Commission and it was originally part of Art in Store Fronts program. It was later adopted indefinitely as part of the landscape. He felt pleased that he was able to contribute through his work to the City and the primarily Mexican and Asian neighborhood already so rich in art and culture. He felt good to be part of that.

Tahiti has five pieces hanging in the office of Interim San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and on January of 2012, the City Arts Commission has commissioned the largest project he has ever taken on up until now. The piece is to be a full-scale installation across from the City Hall to celebrate the Art Commissions 80th Anniversary.

In 2010, he was commissioned by Kanaga System Krush to do several Musicians’ portraits to be spray painted on the walls of System Krush Recording Studios. In his most recent work with KSK, he created a whole series of hand cut stencil portraits of Malian musicians. The portraits were then transformed into designs to be printed on T-shirts and gave birth to the "Artist Series" Collection. The Collection came about in order to support Malian Musicians by giving back to them 40% from sales proceeds.

To learn more about Tahiti Pehrson, log on to his website at http://tahitipehrson.com/