This painting's title in its long form is "Moon Goddess Shooting Stars Over the Horizon of the Universe", which you can see, is exactly what it is.

Two foot by four foot acrylic on Masonite, by well-known Big Island artist Robert Orlin Woodward, "Woody". It came into my possession in the early 1980's when I was living and working in the Puna District on the windward side of Hawaii Island.

My friend Tim Gaughen had a big secondhand store in Keaau, a sugar mill town at the center of East Hawaii at a crossroads between Hilo to the North, Puna to the southeast, and Volcano to the southwest. He came into possession of the Moon Goddess at a time Woody was strapped for cash. I thought it was the finest thing I had ever seen for sale at Gaughen's Emporium.

Over the years I had built and remodeled houses for Tim from Pahoa to Volcano. I made countless repairs and remodels of the Emporium itself, and sold a number of my redwood hot tubs from the mainland. There was always something that was going to need to be done on the Emporium and anything I wanted to purchase I could work off. I had made use of this arrangement to score a bunch of surfboards, and another painting, a reclining Hawaiian nude I call "Likeke", shown below.

Tim regards this transaction as the time I probably got the best of him. I don't remember what the price was, and it didn't matter, because the price was doing a certain amount of work with Tim, which was always hilarious. The price was going to be a calculated amount of having fun.

The Moon Goddess hung over Johnny's bed from the time he was about ten years old in our house in Ainaloa and has been a feature in all the places I have occupied ever since, so I've had forty years to examine it. I could go on and on with descriptions of the details in this fantasy, but it's probably the best experience to discover everything on your own.

Woody has made his living all these years making small paintings of Hawaiian scenes, palm trees, seaside landscapes with outrigger canoes on the beach, a series of vintage cars in various states of repair or being swallowed by the jungle in local island settings, with coffee shacks, surfboards and hula girls. Some were elaborate depictions of ancient Hawaiian culture, sailing canoes. For an idea, click his picture for a link to a YouTube slideshow of his work.


The Moon Goddess may be the rarest among his works. It's an elaborate fantasy in which he has invented a whole cosmology in an otherworldly setting where shooting stars are plucked from the stalk of a blooming plant he has invented and launched into the sky from the bow of bare-breasted warrior goddess, over an erupting skull mountain volcano into a starscape of unknown constellations. Not to mention the cats.

The best of his creations, as I have discovered, can sell for over $2000. This may be one of his masterpieces. I'm thinking as much as $3000.

Likeke

     This second painting, the Likeke nude, I also obtained from Gaughen's Emporium, and by the same sort of transaction. For having a certain amount of fun building stuff for Tim, I came home with another great painting.

Knowing nothing about the artist, except the name "Likeke", there's not much I can say about this except it's a beautiful, understated delight. See for yourself. An intriguing mudra with her hands, and the thinnest dracaena as her fig leaf. "Likeke" is not her name. In Hawaii, it's a way of saying "Richard", like "Kavika" is a way of saying "David", and "Keoni", "John".

Unknown value. I think it's oil paint on plywood. Make extravagant offer.

Not for sale. Uncle John's Garage Sale is just the name of the book.

     

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