Roughin it up

The clients really really like the photo of my triptych in Mary Philpott's book, Hawai'i, A Sense of Place. In particular they like the antique look of the paintings. What is hard to explain is that that look was a complete accident at the time and is very difficult to duplicate. So what I did today was take the whole canvas off the stretcher bars, soak it in a sinkful of water, crumple it up and beat it with a mallet. It still didn't get that pattern of cracks in it, but it does look a bit less shiny and new. All that soaking made it shrink a bit so now that it is restretched it has an uneven edge of canvas that I painted with the foundation terra cotta color, which I think is pretty cool....

Legend of the Mo'o sisters

As usual with my big commissions of late I have been poring over my books on the Nabis (Bonnard and his group) and the Symbolists (Gauguin and his followers) for inspiration. The Nabi painters did a lot of very decorative work in Paris in the early 1900s but their work is more dabby and free than one thinks of as Art Nouveau. So here I am trying to adapt this European take on Japanese art for a Polynesian legend, quite a strange train of influence. This painting is for prints which will be hung over a kitchen bar area in time share units, and so it should hold up to scrutiny at close quarters. I tend to feel my way through these projects not really knowing exactly what I am doing, so it's not an automatic guarantee that the brushwork will be much to look at but hopefully the overall feeling will be nostalgic and evocative.






Here is Alaina deHavilland's poster for a coffee festival this Saturday over at the Four Seasons in Ka'upulehu, north Kona, which I'll be attending with Tuko as token artists displaying our work and hopefully drumming up some interest in the gallery.

my commission

I always thought it would be fun to document a painting in progress, maybe hourly, and make an animation showing it all coming together. Now actually of course on YouTube you can find thousands of way more interesting visuals. But anyway here, in the spirit of that idea, is an updated photo of my current canvas, acrylics on linen.

(This is for some timeshare units in Waikoloa)

Gail a'paintin

I stayed overnight Wednesday at the gallery so I could meet with a model Thursday morning. She is a fine Hawaiian beauty named Alona and she agreed to model for my Mo'o figures in my current commission. Mo'o are the Hawaiian lizard creatures in legends and can be fierce, but these particular mo'o took the form of beautiful women living happily in a brackish pond in north Kona (South Kohala, really). Pele heard how beautiful they were, and of course sent lava down to destroy their world and turn them into rocks, where they remain to this day. Alona and I met at some beautiful brackish ponds in Keaukaha, Hilo's balmy oceanfront neighborhood.

Coincidentally the Hilo plein air group was meeting in the same place -- Leleiwi Beach Park -- and so I did my usual painting alongside Gail. I remembered to get a picture of Gail but forgot to get one of me and my version right next to her. Maybe I'll add it later.....