Pocketful of Memories, 2010
I've got a shelf of thumbnail sketch books I've collected over my years of painting Maui. Every so often, I'll flip through one and come up with a painting. This was painted from a sketch I'd done over 30 years ago when Makena was an inaccessibly rural stretch of coastline. There were a few houses here and there between long stretches of undeveloped acreage. My wife and I frequented a few hideaways back then until the area was transformed into what it is today. One of the bittersweet aspects of living this long in one place is knowing how things used to be. To bring it back to life, if only in a painting, is one of the more pleasant benefits of being a painter.