Gathering Darkness, 1990

This painting had a very unusual beginning. I went out to my studio and started laying out colors on the canvas with no notion of where it was going. I just went with it, mixing and blending spontaneously until I'd had enough. I cleaned up the brushes and went back to the house for lunch.

I forgot about the canvas until my wife walked into the studio. She came back and complimented me on the night scene I was painting. I was a little puzzled until I went in to look at the canvas. I saw not only a valley wall in the paint; it looked very much like a place I'd seen in Hanalei Valley a couple of months prior. I set out to fill in all the details and ended up with this painting.