Day 4 —Puukohola Heiau
Over the first few days traveling to the Kohala Coast and back I noticed what appeared to be an ancient structure on one of the hills just above the ocean near Spencers Beach. I asked my bother what it was and he told me it was the heiue or temple and that it was a national park. According to the park’s web site, “Pu’ukohola Heiau was built by Kamehameha the Great in 1791 to honor his family’s war god Kukailimoku. He believed that by building this temple he would gain the mana (spiritual power) to unite all the warring islands into a peaceful kingdom. In 1810 he became the first person to rule over all of Hawaii.” I had a fascination for this massive structure that is built into the side of the slope with massive angled walls that rise from the top. We decided that it would be a good place to paint so the next day we drove over to check it out.
The park has a small welcome center below the ruins, we parked and wondered around the site looking for a good vi
ew. I had an idea in my head of the temple to one side with the ocean in the background. As we toured around I was stuck by the massive amount of effort that it must have taken to build. I found that it’s not actually ancient at all and is two structures. The older one built below and upper structure built in 1789. The boulders it’s made from are not from the near by lava fields but from a quarry 14 miles away and were moved by workers who passed them from one to the next in a long human chain! This is pretty impressive itself, as the amount of workers involved must of been huge. Hawaiian society at that time was organized into a caste like system not unlike the Hindu culture of India. If you were of the lower castes life was pretty tough. Up until Kamehameha each island had it’s own chief and on the big Island they had two, one on the Kona side and one on the Hilo side. The population was large and not exactly peaceful either—having violent battles for control thoughout their history. Kamehameha finally defeated all the other chiefs and became the one true king. Hawaiian religion, like a lot polynesian societies had a bit of sacrificial tendencies. Vanquished enemies, criminals and to some extent lower caste individuals were scarified to the gods, of which there were many. In the lagoon below the heiue is the Hale o Kapuni, an underwater stone post structure dedicated to sharks. It marks a spot where victims were offered as sacrifice. To this day the lagoon is the regular haunt of sharks—perhaps still looking for a literal ”hand out”. Although I didn’t know that much about it until after, I think the look of both paintings have a kind of dark power to them.
As we walked the grounds I became obsessed with the idea of a view at eye level or above looking past the structure to the sea. A lot of the site was closed to the public for some reason so we could not get up behind it like I envisioned. We walked into the welcome center and talked to one of the park rangers whom Scott happened to have met before. We asked him if we could set up behind the heiau on the hill but according to him they would not allow visitors up in the area because of graves and remains still there. I just was not satisfied with the view from below so we decide to go out to the highway and see if we could set up somewhere close enough that still gave us the temple up front with the Pacific behind.
We looked around and found a spot across the highway on a short rise. Anywhere off the road in this western or leeward side of the island can be a almost desert like. The big island is the youngest of all the islands 
and has much more lava unexposed then those that are older—some by tens of thousands of years. Much of this lava covered area is uninhabitable unless a lot of work clearing, covering it with soil and irrigating it is done. It’s also hot and very rugged. I was fortunate that I had my boots with me on this trip, they ended up being very useful.
I decided to do a 12 x 24” panoramic view. I started with a dark grisaille in brown and red as an under painting. As we worked it got hotter, and windy and this was the only day I got bit of a sunburn the entire trip. The foreground shows the rugged landscape with mesquite trees and the famous pili grass that has a shocking yellow straw look. Behind the slopes the coast fades into the mist with the sun glinting off the ocean. This work, above all is Hawaii—nowhere else. It was my goal to make each painting unmistakably about this wonderful place.
Scott’s painting is on a 12 x 18 format and it’s a much richer colored and as is his style, thicker and more expressive. He captures the feel of the area very well and it has a primitive power that is very effective in this instance. Both are large for plein air plus and we spent a lot of time touring the grounds so 
after six hours we were ready for a swim and a beer. Spencer beach was just next door and in a half an hour we were swimming in the cool Pacific. The World Series was being played in Boston and St. Louis all the week I visited. We are both big baseball fans—my father played professionally for the Brooklyn Dodgers! We made it a habit to be somewhere we could get in the game or at least a few innings. With the time difference, 2PM in the afternoon worked out to be game time so we made a special effort to be somewhere we could enjoy it. Scott has a few favorite haunts and we visited his favorite bar for a cold beer, lunch and the game. The life of an artist can be very demanding.