The great French novelist Honore de Balzac once declared: "No site in the forest is without significance."

The work of O‘ahu-born artist Michael Furuya -- on view at Honolulu’s Cedar Street Galleries and the gallery's website – vividly proves the truth of Balzac’s claim. The 19th-centry writer was a powerful realist in technique, but a passionate believer in the underlying spirit. Similarly, Furuya’s acrylics offer hauntingly detailed and realistic wildlife portraits of Hawaiian birds, turtles, and other native species as they appear in their natural habitats --yet Furuya’s realism is not that of the  "It could be a photograph" school, which often removes the veil of mystery behind a painted work.

Through all Furuya’s work gleams a living energy: the spirit of these birds and animals, as interpreted through the soul of the artist. He doesn't leave viewers wondering how the task was done but what emotion went into the work, or, what the artist's connection to the subject matter may have been.

A prime example is Furuya's "I'iwi on Native White.” While the subject of the painting—a Hawaiian I'iwi bird—is poised in rather dignified fashion on the limb of a hibiscus tree, it is not only the concentrated stance of the animal that attracts the viewer's eye. The four hibiscus flowers, which all seemingly point in slightly different directions, mysteriously seem to be moving their centers towards the light source within the painting. Interestingly, the light itself floods the very center of the image, drawing the depth of color and layers on a single tree branch, above which the bird is poignantly situated. It's as if the flower's stamen are zeroing in on the subject, which could either be the bird or the light source, both of which are captured in their moment on the limb.

“Not a glade, not a thicket [exists] that does not provide analogies to the labyrinth of human thoughts,” suggested Balzac. Furuya does not hesitate to explain what thoughts and feelings the natural scenes of Hawai‘i inspire in him. In one painting, he says, “I wanted the viewer to feel the cool air and feel the mist on their skin. This piece is more about the environment than the individual components in it. When you're standing in the forest and you smell the moist air and you hear the songs of the native birds in the distance, you realize that there is a whole other side to Hawai‘i. Time stands still and for a moment nothing matters.”

Furuya has been drawing for as long as he can remember. From high school art electives to the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, and onward to a degree from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, he sketched his way to the Mainland and back again. After taking his degree, he

a few projects began iking illustrations for the Honolulu advertisement agency Milici Valenti Ng Pack. A single, unlikely piece cast him into the spotlight. A playful sketch found its way on to the cover of the telephone book, complete with a short bio on the inset. "It really launched my career," admits Furuya.

Commercial print work came rolling in. With bills and loan payments seemed under control, Furuya thought it an ideal time to get back in to his more creative roots. With his cousin, aspiring playwright Lisa Matsumoto, he formed Ohia Productions theatrical company. She wrote and produced works; Furuya made puppets and sets, designed lighting and other aesthetics. He enjoyed it, but something else was tugging at his heartstrings – something Balzac would have understood. "Who among those people with a cultivated spirit, or whose heart has been wounded,” he asked, “can walk in a forest without the forest speaking to him?"

One day, Cedar Street Galleries owner Michael Schnack saw one of Furuya's pieces and asked if he could use it for the Punahou Carnival Gallery. The painting was eventually chosen as the carnival’s official poster.

"He is a great realist and naturalist," said Schnack. "His subject matter and technique really stands out from the others in the gallery. And it sells quite well. It's funny; a lot of the wildlife stuff doesn't always sell. But people seem to really connect with his birds, especially."

Lately Furuya has been doing less commercial work and more realist paintings. This helps him stay in touch with his roots as he insists that his two young children have the opportunity to experience the same beautiful island life
he did as a child.

"I grew up liking animals and art—and now I can combine those things. So I head out for hikes as much as I can," Furuya said. "Especially trips to the Big Island, Kaua‘i and Maui, where I can find so many places to stare at the birds and native plants."

Furuya spends considerable time in O‘ahu's museums looking at birds that no longer exist over Hawaiian skies. There are volumes of books that contain photographs, old lithographs and sketches of native plants that can no longer be found throughout the Islands. It's no reason, according to Furuya, for them to not be included in today's paintings.

"To me it's hard describing things in words,” he says. “ In a painting, it's even harder. But I like to challenge myself; I'm not complacent.”

His works are mostly acrylics on canvas, created through fairly thin strokes with a lot of glazes. Somehow the canvases never seem weighed down by over-painting. There is no struggle in his work; it's all very organic and "in-the-moment" on the canvas. At least, it doesn't look like he struggled with the components of an image. Everything appears to have its place.

Two of his landscape portraits, "'Iao" and "Ko'olau Waterfalls," illustrate this quality. They not only capture the movement of both water and wind (visible through the fluttering leaves), but also that of the mists or clouds that loom in each painting. The cloud masses create a veil within each work that seems to say, "This painting was a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and now it is something different than what you see here."

Balzac’s meditations on nature reached a conclusion that aptly sum up the feeling of Furuya’s work. "If one searched for the causes of that sensation, at once solemn, simple, gentle, mysterious, that seizes one,” mused the writer, “perhaps it would be found in the sublime and ingenious spectacle of all the creatures obeying their destinies, immutably docile."

In the work of Michael Furuya, the painter’s quietly fierce passion is translated into visions of docile creates in harmony with Hawai’i itself – for a privileged moment in time.