Charles Arnoldi
While visiting Hawaii in the early 1990s, Arnoldi felt an aversion to the toxicity of oil paint and decided to try acrylic. He had achieved intense, vibrant colors painting with acrylics on wood, but it was the acrylic paintings on canvas that solidified Arnoldi's place as a noted colorist.
The islands' flora and fauna influenced not only the bright, lush colors of these new paintings, but also the use of images from nature – sharply-delineated leafy shapes, anemone-like creatures, huge water droplets, even centipedes – that appear for the first time.
Arnoldi recognized that he had finally gotten to a place in his career where he could make deliberately "beautiful" paintings, without caring whether or not the art world would embrace them. It was a huge step, moving from working with nature literally through the use of wood, to referencing nature directly. It was really only a nod to representational painting, however, as Arnoldi has always favored abstraction.