Herbert Kawainui Kāne, considered one of the principal figures in the renaissance of Hawaiian culture in the 1970s, was a celebrated artist-historian and author with a special interest in the seafaring traditions of the ancestral peoples of Hawaiʻi. Kāne played a key role in demonstrating that Hawaiian culture arose not from some accidental seeding of Polynesia, but that Hawaiʻi was reachable by voyaging canoes from Tahiti able to make the journey and return. This offered a far more complex notion of the cultures of the Pacific Islands than had previously been accepted. Furthermore, he created vivid imagery of Hawaiian culture prior to contact with Europeans, and especially the period of early European influence, that sparked appreciation of a nearly forgotten traditional life. He painted dramatic views of war, exemplified by The Battle at Nuʻuanu Pali, the potential of conflicts between cultures such as in Cook Entering Kealakekua Bay, where British ships are dwarfed and surrounded by Hawaiian canoes, as well as bucolic quotidian scenes and lush images of a robust ceremonial and spiritual life, that helped arouse a latent pride among Hawaiians during a time of general cultural awakening.
Masami Teraoka is an American contemporary artist. His work includes Ukiyo-e-influenced woodcut prints and paintings in watercolor and oil.
The Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design is housed in the former home of Doris Duke near Diamond Head just outside Honolulu, Hawaii. It is now owned and operated as a public museum of the arts and cultures of the Islamic world by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (DDFIA). Guided tours depart from the Honolulu Museum of Art, which operates the tours in co-operation with DDFIA.
Toshiko Takaezu was a Japanese-American ceramic artist and painter from Pepeeko, Hawaii who was known for her rounded, closed forms that viewed ceramics as a fine art and more than a functional vessel.
D. Wayne Higby is an American artist working in ceramics.
John Chin Young 容澤泉 (1909–1997) was a painter who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on March 26, 1909. He was the son of Chinese immigrants and began drawing at the age of eight, stimulated by Chinese calligraphy, which he learned in Chinese language school. Young had his first and only art lessons while a student at President William McKinley High School in Honolulu. Thereafter, his art was entirely self-taught. Young is best known for his Zen-like depictions of horses, paintings of children, and abstractions. Over the years, he acquired an important collection of ancient Asian art, which he donated to the Honolulu Museum of Art and the University of Hawaii at Manoa as the John Young Museum. John Chin Young died in 1997 at the age of 88. His daughter Debbie Young is also a painter residing in Hawaii.
Cornelia MacIntyre Foley was an American painter from Hawaii.
Madge Tennent was a naturalized American artist, born in England, raised in South Africa, and trained in France. She ranks among the most accomplished and globally renowned artists ever to have lived and worked in Hawaiʻi.
Isami Doi was an American printmaker and painter.
Reuben Tam was an American landscape painter, educator, poet and graphic artist.
Jean Shin is an American artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is known for creating elaborate sculptures and site-specific installations using accumulated cast-off materials.
Squeak Carnwath is a contemporary American painter and arts educator. She is a Professor Emerita of Art at University of California, Berkeley.
Beth Cavener, also known as Beth Cavener Stichter, is an American artist based out of Montana. A classically trained sculptor, her process involves building complex metal armatures to support massive amounts of clay. Cavener is best known for her fantastical animal figures, which embody the complexity of human emotion and behavior.
The Catharine E. B. Cox Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts is a biennial award given to a visual artist who is a former or current resident of Hawaii. The recipient may work in any medium, and is honored with a solo exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art. The award was established in 1985 by Charles S. Cox of La Jolla, California, Doak C. Cox of Honolulu and Richard H. Cox of Honolulu to honor their grandmother, Catharine Elizabeth Bean Cox.
Robert Kushner(; born 1949, Pasadena, CA) is an American contemporary painter who is known especially for his involvement in Pattern and Decoration. He has been called "a founder" of that artistic movement. In addition to painting, Kushner creates installations in a variety of mediums, from large-scale public mosaics to delicate paintings on antique book pages.
Terry Acebo Davis is a Filipino American artist and nurse based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her art is thematically linked to her family and her origins as a Filipino American.
Americo Makk was a painter and portrait artist originally from Hungary, who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1962 to escape the communist movement in Brazil. His notable paintings include historical and ecclesiastical portraits and murals, including portraits of two United States Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, as well as notable figures Edward Teller, Eva Gabor, Barbara Sinatra, Ray Price, and Barbara Carrera.
Arthur Johnsen was an American artist. Born and raised on Oahu and living most of his post-university life on the Big Island of Hawaii, he is known for his impressionistic paintings and murals of Hawaiiana.
Chawky Frenn is an American artist, author, and art professor. He currently teaches art at George Mason University in northern Virginia. His highly realistic paintings have strong narrative social and political elements. Frenn is a former Fulbright Scholar, and currently resides in the Greater Washington, D.C. area.
Debra Drexler is an American painter, installation artist, curator and professor. Her work is informed both by participating in the contemporary resurgence of abstraction coming out of New York, and by living in the Post Colonial Pacific since 1992. She has participated in over thirty solo and over 100 group exhibitions in national and international venues. Debra Drexler is a Professor at the University of Hawaii, where she is Chair of the Drawing and Painting Area. She maintains studios in Brooklyn, NY and Kailua, HI.
