Miki and I just returned from a trip to Maui,  stayed at our time share unit in Kahana Falls.  A trip to Hawaii for Miki and I is a trip where we  eat the local foods of Hawaii and visiting some of the old towns we enjoy walking around.  Miki and I are not the beach types,   laying  on the beach and  soaking in the sun, we enjoy seeing things and places.  The  majority of our trips, we take is  going from one place to another, not staying in one spot very long.  I decided to take my pastels with me on this trip, since we were staying for a week in Maui.  I left my sketch books at home and concentrated on painting pastel scenes of Maui.   I did not have a specific goals except I wanted to at lease paint one painting each day.  The place we were staying was across the street from a small beach with rock and palm trees, and we had a large balcony that was perfect for setting up my easel.  I packed all my art supplies in my carry on luggage, tripod, pastel box, easel, pastel paper, tape, ink, and other essentials.  TAS saw my pastels all lined up neatly through the x-ray, and inspected them.

The first morning I decided to take my easel to the beach, and I ended up painting a typical beach scene with palms, beach, rock snd waves.  I had a wonderful time painting for about one  hour, in Maui.  After the first day, our trip was a series of getting into our car and traveling from one location to another, stopping at local restaurant to partake in the local cuisine.  I painted each day, either in the morning or after we returned from our galavanting. 

On one of our trips we visited the town of Makawao, its a cowboy town situated on the slopes of Haleakala.  Its turned into a very tourist spot I counted about 6 art galleries on the main street.  Miki and I were there before Covid and now some of the places we liked have been closed or another business has taken over.  On the way back, we got lost, as our GPS did not have a signal, so we went back to asking the locals how to find our way back. On our way back we saw a line of cars parked along the road, we found out why,  a gigantic field of Sunflowers were growing as far as the horizon.  Needless to say I stopped and took a bunch of photos.   The first photos were taken at chest high, then I took some from a birds eye view, but the most interesting ones were taken looking up from the ground pointing your I phone up for a close up of the sunflowers, and the backdrop of the Maui mountains.  

Before we left on our trip, Lisa Skelly owner of a art gallery on Balboa Island, gave me some places to visit and names of people to say hi to.  One of the places we visited is an art gallery in Lahaina, The Village Galleries.  I spent a few hours talking to the owner Lynn Shue,  she told me she is 87 years old and she has been the owner of the gallery for over 40 years.  She is the person that started the “Maui plien air festival” that takes place each February.  She told me she lost over 300 paintings in the fire that burned the town of Lahaina.  She had just moved into her new gallery when Miki and I visited her.  WOW what a high energy person, to take out a 5 year lease on her new gallery, at the age of 87.  She told me her artist friends depend on her so she decided to open her gallery again.  I painted 12 painting during our visit,  I sold one and gave one to Lynn.   Next time you go anywhere by car or air, consider taking a few pastels, it will be very rewarding and fun. These are a few of the painting I completed.