Editor’s Note: Steve, a high school pal from Boise, Idaho, is a professional artist with many international awards in his pocket. His Windswept Studio is in the beautiful San Juan Islands in Washington state. Check out his author bio on this site.
With this post he has a fun story to share about painting an active volcano on the Big Island of Hawai’i and meeting “The Daughter of Pele”.
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Lava bombs, steaming cracks in the earth, together with the personification of “Pele”, the revered Hawaiian goddess of fire, lightning, wind, and volcanoes, all fell into place for me when I painted a live eruption at Kilauea Volcano, episode 7 on January 28, 2025.
My wife, Judy, and I were on a more routine plein air painting trip to Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii when we learned that an eruption was predicted for the volcano with possible fiery live explosions and lava flows.
We had visited Volcano National Park the previous week only to see Halema’uma’u crater with a small amount of steam rising from the vents in an otherwise scorched caldera. Nothing to write home about nor visually exciting.
Previously it’s been difficult to know when a volcano is going to erupt, but currently a fine-tuned system is making eruption predictions quite accurate. Now one was predicted at Kilauea Volcano in Volcano National Park on the Big Island.
In anticipation, we booked a room at nearby Hilo the night before in order to have a shorter 20-minute drive to the park when it opened at 8 a.m. the next morning.
We were the first car through the park gates and drove straight to the “the steam vents” this time witnessing huge clouds of smoke and ash rising in the near distance at the crater’s edge.
I grabbed my painting gear and hiked to the barricade just in time to see a 400’ tall fire and lava plume less than 2 miles from my perch.
Signs posted along the trail warned “Watch for Sudden Cracks and Fissures in the Earth’s Surface”, as tremors shook everything. I paused at a rock the size of a small car with a sign describing a “13 ton Lava Bomb” tossed from the volcano a few years prior which instantly brought back comical visions of “Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner” cartoon series, thinking about how that rock was ”tossed” and that maybe this wasn’t such a safe place to paint from after all and why the hell am I out here anyway?
I have painted in some pretty crazy-scary spots, like around grizzly bears at Glacier National Park, or perched above wild rivers in Idaho along narrow cliff edges where rattlesnakes love to live — even once between a bull moose and calf at a river in Canada, but never at the edge of an erupting lava-spewing volcano.
The big action had started. Small, wafer-thin-like shards (“Pele’s Hair”) floated through the atmosphere, as did carbon dioxide steaming straight out of the ground for miles around, while the volcano pulsed like a gigantic furnace, making big rumbling sounds and very loud, sharp explosions. The wild kaleidoscopic colors and earth shaking action were beyond my wildest visions, a painter’s adrenaline rush!
Hundreds of excited people started to arrive as I painted, running up and down the barricade for selfies, while the eruption continued. I managed to complete two plein air paintings that morning.
About 10:45 I was about to set-up for a third painting when this sweet little red-haired girl showed up with her mother, swinging a B&W Polaroid camera on a strap and politely asked, “May I take a picture of your picture?”
How could I possibly resist, so I replied “Of course you may” . . . and I took my own as she took hers.
With a flourish, she pulled her Polaroid picture out of the camera to hand it to me — exactly as the volcano abruptly stopped – a screeching stop, like Wile E. Coyote teetering at the edge of an abyss, looking cross-eyed stupid as the Roadrunner gives him a final push – it simply stopped, not to erupt for another 8 days!
Her mother explained that she gave her daughter a B&W Polaroid to use because she loved taking lots of reference pictures to do art. What a great, supportive mom.
When we traded pictures, I asked my new red-haired friend “Do you want to be an artist when you grow up?” She replied matter-of-factly, “I already am an artist.”
This young artist’s hair was a color match for the erupting volcano. I thought to myself, “Pele is standing straight in front of me.”
To me she will always be “The Daughter of Pele” who personified the rarest of rare encounters in my lifetime as an artist.
Postscript: Episode 48 just erupted today! This is an active volcano!
Great story and accompanying “hot” painting, Steve. Both are brilliantly done! Thank you
I felt like I was right there with you, and the Daughter of Pele !!
Steve, What an adventurous artist you are! I would be running the other way!
I was on the edge of my seat hoping a lava bomb would NOT be tossed your way.
What an unforgettable moment in time.
I love that the little red head nonchalantly told you she was already an artist…girl power!
You are a talented artist and writer.
Now that’s an awesome story if I ever read one. The images and words are perfect together. I love the little red haired daughter of Pele. So fitting in every way. Congratulations on a masterpiece story!