FROM THE STUDIO · MARCH 2026
Chasing the Light
at Wailea Beach
“Wailea Sunset”, oil on canvas — painted from the bluff above the beach.
There's a particular half hour at Wailea — just before the sun drops behind Lāna‘i — when the whole sky goes to gold and the water turns to glass. I've been trying to paint it for years, and I still set up my easel on the bluff whenever the forecast looks right.
The challenge is speed. The light that makes that scene worth painting only lasts a few minutes, so I block in the big shapes — the mountains, the line of the horizon, the path down to the sand — long before color comes into it. Everything else is memory and a hundred earlier evenings.
Starting on location
Most of my paintings begin outdoors, in front of the thing itself. A photograph flattens Maui's color; standing in it, you feel how warm the light actually is, how much violet hides in the shadows of the palms. I bring those small studies back to the studio and let them grow.
I'm not trying to copy the view. I'm trying to remember how it felt to stand there.
If you'd like to see a piece in progress, I'm usually at the Wailea Beach Resort on Thursday mornings — come say aloha. And if there's a particular beach or hour of light that means something to you, I'd love to paint it.
Commissions are always open.