“I bought two of his pieces before I even met him,” said Kina Gray, wife of the late artist Wailehua Gray. When they did connect, at a friend’s luau in California years later, she said, “I walked right at him; I needed to meet, him.” She became his manager immediately, beginning a lifelong partnership.
A prolific painter, skilled musician and student of Hawaiian culture, Gray’s work illustrated stories and magazine covers across the state. His evocative mural “Lokahi” graces the corridor of North Hawaii Community Hospital.
In the first public showing in the decade since his death, the remarkable paintings of Wailehua Gray are on display as part of distinctive furniture groupings at Henderson Design Group in The Shops at Mauna Lani, 9. a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, until Aug. 7.
Wailehua was born in Honolulu in 1933, and grew up in Haleiwa on the North Shore. He learned to play slack key guitar from the legendary Gabby Pahinui, and experienced his first taste of jazz, which became a lifelong passion. His father had aspirations of Gray &Sons house painters, but that was not Wailehua’s calling. In grade school he drew book covers for his classmates, charging them 10 cents for black and white, 15 cents for color.
He joined the Marine Corps at age 19, and his travels with them and the Merchant Marines took him around the world. When his ship sailed into port near Philadelphia, he looked across the harbor to a spacious home that overlooked the bay. He had no way of knowing that Kina, then 11 years old, lived in that house with her family.
Wailehua went to college on the GI Bill, earning a bachelor of fine arts degree from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, and developing a style that combined photographic attention to detail with deep spirituality and imagery.
“Everything he painted was sold,” said Kina who took on management and sales, allowing him to paint undistracted. As the relationship grew into marriage, they moved to Honokaa in 1990, becoming friends with neighbors Gary Washburn, Dave and Sherry Pettus and others whose shared love of music was a bond. Wailehua designed the characteristic logo for the Pettus’ Hamakua Music Festival.
“They played every Tuesday until he got sick,” said Kina, remembering jam sessions with Washburn, Steve Toma, John Kahakalau and other musicians. “I had a concert every night,” she said.
After Wailehua became ill in 2001, his hanai brother Richard Stevens brought his camcorder and taped a four-hour, 20-minute video talk-story. Kina put the camera in the closet and closed the door.
“My whole compass was him,” she said. Ten years later, she went to the closet, got the tape and watched it, wept, and watched it again. Inspired to bring his work back into view, she worked with Kema Nash and Henderson Design Group and created an opportunity for art lovers to experience Wailehua’s work again.
“My whole life goal is to perpetuate Wai and his art,” she said. “I think about it every day.”
For more information about the paintings, contact Kina Gray, kinagray@gmail.com.