What Hawaii Taught Me About Light

Studio light is patient. Island light is not. On the Big Island the sun can rewrite a whole scene in twenty minutes, so living with that light taught me to decide quickly and stay decisive once I am at the easel.

I block the largest shapes first, get the value structure honest, then chase color. If the values are right, the painting reads from across a room. If they are wrong, no amount of beautiful color will save it.

That discipline followed me back into the abstract work. Even a nonrepresentational canvas needs a value structure holding it together.