Storytelling with Color and Canvas: Suzy Papanikolas Makes Hawai‘i’s People Come Alive

By Karen Valentine

A painting by Suzy Papanikolas delights the eyes and the imagination. As you walk by it, whether in a gallery or in your own home, it grabs your attention. What is that? It’s not what is in the painting, but what is not. It’s the moment in between the beginning and the ending of the story the painting tells.

With her incredible eye for human emotion, color and light, she gives you a glimpse inside her subjects’ lives. A young hula dancer waiting to perform—her eyes tell you she is both excited and concerned about the performance to come. Will she remember all her steps? Will she make her kumu proud? Three hula sisters relaxing after the performance—the bond they share as they laugh and relax is more than the moment. It tells of their commitment to the halau, through discipline, joy and pain, how they build relationships that can last a lifetime. Up close and intimate, Suzy intrigues you with a light-dappled midriff, dancer’s feet at rest, or a pair of hands holding a paddle or an ipu. What was the moment before that? What did they do next?

Suzy’s early training in portraiture and watercolor with respected California artists at her parents’ art school in Laguna Beach, California, immersed her in the arts community at an early age. Her later college studies in anthropology, world literature and psychology helped her understand humanity—the person who lives inside the portrait. Her biography states she is a musician/songwriter, farmer, psychotherapist, carpenter, decorative painter, muralist and fine arts painter. She has lived in Europe and Mexico and traveled widely throughout the South Pacific, looking for a place to land once she had decided she wanted to live in the islands. After living on Maui for a while, she has landed in Papa‘iko, north of Hilo on the Big Island.

“Life is easier now,” she says. “I designed and built my house on my own land. I can see all of Hilo from here.” Following her studies in psychotherapy, she practiced as a primal therapist at a clinic in Los Angeles, the Center for Feeling Therapy. “It was very intense,” she said, admitting she was also working on her own issues. When that clinic folded, she moved to Berkeley and, during the 80s, worked there full time as a carpenter. It was reminiscent of her childhood days building tree houses on a neighbor’s large estate—with the permission of the gardener, she says. While in Berkeley, she played bass, percussion and guitar in local pizza parlors with a group called the Righteous Mothers.

The combination of her construction expertise and her art led Papanikolas to work as a faux finisher and then a muralist. She produced one series of 40-foot-tall murals at the San Francisco International Airport, featuring animals in Renaissance clothing. No wonder the artist is comfortable with large-scale work and larger-than-life figures. Many of her paintings are in the four-by-three-foot range in size. Suzy is attracted to the dancers, paddlers and cultural practitioners who live the Hawaiian culture.

“I like to catch people when they’re really involved in what they’re doing. I see the pensive looks on dancers waiting to perform. I’ve gotten to know many kumu as I’ve visited the cultural festivals.”

A prolific painter, she is devoting herself full time to her art. The ocean and wildlife also attract her attention. Many of her paintings capture the relationship of people with water “Keiki in Tidepool,” “Splash,” “Paddler at Rest,” “Young Wahine Fishing,” “Swim Sisters.” Painting with acrylic on canvas with a textured base facilitates the brilliance of her colors and the ability to interpret reflected, natural lighting. Light and shadow emphasize the shapes of her human figures in a painterly way, and the faces are expressive and lively. Beyond realism, she uses her artist’s skill to make the subjects pop off the surface.

A new interest for Papanikolas is in carving line and texture on Masonite with a new series of paintings of cattle egrets. The soft, pastel colors enhance the white feathers of the graceful, long legged birds, and the paintings have an Oriental look and feel.

Paintings by Suzy Papanikolas are featured at the Gallery Hilton Waikoloa Village and Dreams of Paradise Gallery in Hilo. See more of her paintings on her website. ❖