By high school, with influence from summer art school mentors, I committed my art direction to multiple styles – artwork to artwork. I called it universalism.

For about 15 years before the 2020 covid lock-downs I was all but exclusively doing black and white portrait commissions. This was in public spaces in Honolulu. These charcoal drawings were purposed to be well executed and, like all my work I was usually reaching  for museum standards.

Collectors gave me lots of positive feedback and I was paying my bills. But things were nagging at me: a backlog of to-dos (an impossible projection of colour works), reference photos and sketches gathering dust and an incomplete body of work. I knew I was overstaying.

On March 18, 2020 the pandemic hit, Waikiki became a ghost town. I packed up my easel and display and never returned. The empty visitor destination was now unsettling. I bought an old truck. A welder and I started the initial work to convert the van to a tiny house/a mobile art shop. I packed it full of studio gear, my art and furniture and shipped it interisland to Kaua’i.

I had settled on Kaua’i earlier, 1990, from Sydney. My then-wife, Lisa, our two little girls and I moved with high expectations. But into our second year of island life, over the space of a week, Hurricane Iniki hit, she left (coincidentally), our living situation was pummeled and I suddenly became a single dad. The girls and I took emergency refuse in an upstairs office in Hanalei. I had rented the space planning a small gallery. 

While caring for the girls, I was able to produce some good art. I also kept busy with community work as coordinator of the annual Kaua`i Earth Day events and producing collaborative artworks under The Lovelink Project.

It’s been slow reestablishing myself on Kaua`i and facing an art transition. I was homeless on arrival. Then when I did get a farm camp it ended with losses and back to living in the van. I had savings earmarked for art materials. The art truck conversion is still in progress. I have time now for serious art production.

More in About
Read about my founding The Lovelink Project and travels to 40 countries in the 80s.