When I was nine years old, in 1966, I wrote a letter to then Governor of Florida, Claude Kink, upset about the impact debris was having on sea life and sea birds as well as piling up locally on Dunedin Beach, where I grew up as a kid.

He wrote back personally, a fancy letter with a gold state seal attached next to his signature.

The Governor suggested that, being nine, my options may be limited, so he encouraged me to involve my fourth grade class to help with clean-up and spread the message to adults.

My teacher, Mrs. Vetter, championed the idea upon reading the letter to my classmates: a perfect after school project.

Though our thoughts were in the right place, upon arriving at the beach, the trail of debris stretched to eternity, an impossible task for twenty-eight people four feet tall.

Huge land developers, many not residents of Florida, or at all regulated, acquired property after property from beachfront towns and locals for a song. Where a few cracker (local) cottages occupied a small parcel of land, in a year a towering condo development now supported thousands of tenants in one building. As gravity descended their waste and piped it directly into the ocean; no plan whatsoever for the present or future just grab the fast buck.

Offshore oil drilling, along with regular spills killing massive amounts of ocean life was the talk of the day.

Fast forward to Kauai, Hawaii, 2004. I arrived on Kauai and found much of the same behavior eroding the Garden Isle despite forty years of time to allow different solutions to take hold; especially regarding development.

As a painter, nature, place and sometimes the collision of both appear to be a distinct characteristic in my work.

Exploring the role of urban nature with wry humor, pop culture and urban sprawl set to canvas stages of Los Angeles and New York has been my focus for over twenty years.

Conveying nature in a contemporary sense allows nature to run rampant through my work on its own.

Kauai is nature and place combined to convey sheer amazement in seven million humbling years of evolution in the most iconic sense of self preservation as its own self and island world.

Oceanfront property has been snatched up by mainland and off-island mega-developers from local Hawaiians for next to nothing. Hawaiians are locked out from beaches and areas open and sacred to its people for thousands of years, along with catastrophic ocean debris and the Superferry; bringing cars, invasive species, drugs, and probable death to protected species at sea; held at bay for now.

We can only hope for a better outcome through diligent action and commitment, especially regarding development and protection for all animal and plant species now threatened.

The paintings and drawings presented here are true stories encountered on Kauai; where I plan to spend the rest of my days continuing this body of work where it takes me. I hope to continue to present my visual opinion through good work and personal technique; painting and drawing observations the micro-world of Kauai strains to contain - also images of Aloha, impossible to overlook and daunting on Kauai, especially when left alone.

Mac James
Anahola Bay
Kauai, Hawaii
2008