No palm trees, no turquoise water … but this is typical Hawaii.
Inland on the Big Island, that is. Hawaii is paradisiacal, but it doesn’t get that lush without plenty of rain. F. Scott Cahill can tell you about that. “This painting is, from one angle, an accident — I was attempting to paint Pololu Valley, and in the middle of the painting session, a rainstorm off the Pacific barreled in,” says Cahill. “The intensity forced me to stop (which I’m not generally inclined to do because oil paint isn’t easily affected by rain).
“As I headed back home, I came upon a sharp bend in the road close to the valley and spotted light glimmering off a stream. The woods offered sufficient protection from wet and my palette was still laid out, so I dove right in (to painting that is), disregarding the foolhardiness of painting under a canopy of trees, where light and shade are quite dynamic. The painting is on a big surface, so I literally dashed color in. Its success is more luck than anything else.”
