HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Michael Powell is a longtime Honolulu artist known for capturing the beauty of the islands in his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found, after living in Hawaii these many, many years, the art that seems to endure are landscape paintings. They go back generations of people who have created beautiful landscapes over time,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n
Powell\u2019s paintings don\u2019t involve a brush \u2014 he prefers a palette knife.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis (palette knife) is the only thing I use to create all this. If you look at the sky, you can see it\u2019s so smooth. You don\u2019t see brush strokes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the islands are so unique, to capture it on a canvas as time goes forward, really is capturing something that\u2019s timeless. It doesn\u2019t come in and out of fashion. It\u2019s not in vogue or out of vogue. Landscapes just endure,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Powell credits his work to his mentor and partner in art, the late Hiroshi Tagami, who Powell says taught him everything he knows.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany years ago, Hiroshi said, I\u2019m going to give you your first lesson. I\u2019m going to take a glass ball and roll it against a log as though it\u2019s on the beach, and I want you to paint this. I thought, how can I paint glass? I worked on this for five days, very slowly. And so this is my very first painting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Powell took what he learned, and from a simple painting of a glass ball against a log to multicolor landscapes, Powell has found a new student to pass on what he learned from his mentor: up-and-coming artist Dan de Castro.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor someone who had not painted before in his lifetime, this illustrates that within all of us, we have this capacity,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n
Powell has sold more than 5,000 paintings since he began his career as an artist, but said sales don\u2019t influence his paintings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the world is very busy and full of stress. When you come home, if you can walk into your home and see a painting like this, and it makes you do this,\u201d Powell said, taking a deep breath, \u201cthen that\u2019s what I want to achieve for people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Michael Powell is a longtime Honolulu artist known for capturing the beauty of the islands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-536797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}