The Hawaii Watercolor Society
White Birds in Paradise, Julie McIntyre
Hawaii is has a reputation for beautiful landscapes, exotic people and lovely flowers. It is imminently reasonable to expect Hawaii to draw painters and other artists from all over the world. This is proved to be true; everywhere one visits on the islands of Hawaii there are galleries and gift stores selling original art. Visiting any small town, any national park, museum gift store and tourism office, one is confronted with truly excellent original art.
To support watercolor artists there is, as expected, a wonderful watercolor society, the Hawaii Watercolor Society.
The Hawaiian Islands have a population of about 1.3 million people and about 75% of those people live in Honolulu. It is also somewhat difficult to travel from Island to Island, so it is not surprising that the Hawaii Watercolor Society is centered in Honolulu.
The society is made up of about 300 members, concentrated in small geographical areas, island by island, creating rich opportunities for working and socializing with other artists. A small number of members also live outside the islands. With the largest number of members residing on Oahu Islandthe are many oportunities for interactiving with other members. For example there is a weekly Plein-Air workshop every Thursday at Foster Garden, a venue rich in flowers and landscape scenes.
Members are involved in a variety of efforts including workshops for young people at Boys & Girls Clubs and an art program at a women’s prison near Honolulu. They also donate teaching time and materials to the Hawaii State Art Museum.
The Hawaii Watercolor Society has access to two facilities in downtown Honolulu. The Arts at Marks Gallery hosts the Spring Members Show, and the Annual Open Show is hung at a gallery on the first floor of the Pauahi Building. Artpoints donated an award certificate for the upcoming Members Show while we were in Honolulu.
We visited with the president of the Hawaii Watercolor Society, Ms. Frances Hill, on a lovely sunny winter day in Honolulu. She is working to increase membership and develop more ways to expose the work of Hawaiian artists to the national and world communities,. Under her leadership, the Society is reaching out to other Hawaiian artists’ organizations to provide mutual support and assistance.
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For more information on the vibrant Honolulu Arts district visit:
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