A Hawaiian woman of goodly years sits on a mat beside the beach, her feet bare, her head and neck adorned with flowers. She has been braiding ti leaves into sandals, but at this moment her gaze is fixed beyond her meticulous work, to the sea and sky. Her expression is peaceful, reverent, reflective...

Hikers walk on a remote mountain trail, dwarfed by towering trees shrouded in mist. So vivid is the scene you can almost feel the cool air and hear the crunch of their shoes on twigs and fallen leaves. You know it is quiet there. Very, very quiet.

Gold, silver, ruby, black onyx -- koi glide in a pond, their intriguing markings reflecting the brilliance of precious gems and metals. The water ripples and swirls, becoming an entity with as much life and beauty as the fish themselves...

For the past 34 years, George Allan has shared vignettes of Maui life that are at once simple and spectacular. A native of Melbourne, the 69-year-old master of plein air painting was born the youngest of three boys. Although his parents were of modest means, they filled their home with classical music and art books, and often took their sons to museums.

Allan displayed a penchant for art from the time he was five. That also was when he began assisting his father, a carpenter, on projects ranging from kayaks to kitchen cabinets. “Even as a child, the creative process enthralled me,” he says. “I was amazed at how my dad used to cut pieces of wood that would fit together perfectly later on.”

Formal schooling in Australia ended at age 16. Allan’s teachers and parents recognized his artistic gift, but they believed he would never be able to earn a living from it. So after he graduated, he became a barber—an occupation he hated, but which allowed him to attend art classes at night at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

In four years, Allan earned enough money to embark on a 12-year adventure that took him across the U.S. mainland and to Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Panama, Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon, New Zealand, Greece, England, France, Sweden, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia and Austria.

An avid skier, Allan made St. Anton, Austria, his home for eight years. During the winter, he ran a ski business; when summer came, he’d take odd jobs, visit museums throughout Europe, and sell paintings on the street for $25. “At the time, I didn’t think art would be my career,” he says. “I just loved to paint! I painted whatever was in front of me, and all of my work sold.”

Allan met Earl Callicut, a resident of Lahaina, Maui, in the summer of 1971 when they were both in Greece helping an archaeologist conduct studies of old ships in Piraeus, Athens’ port. The following year, Callicut contacted Allan to see if he would join a crew to sail the Komet, a 51-year-old schooner, from Denmark to Lahaina. There, she was to be converted into a replica of a 19th-century square-rigged brigantine and renamed Carthaginian II to serve as a floating whaling museum under the auspices of the nonprofit Lahaina Restoration Foundation.

Ever the adventurer, Allan agreed. Because of engine trouble, the voyage took almost five months; the vessel finally arrived at Lahaina Harbor in September 1973. Prior to joining the expedition, Allan had never even heard of the historic seaport, which was the whaling capital of the Pacific in the mid-1800s. He was delighted to find “a really special little town. I fell in love with it and its people!” he recalls. “A wonderful group of artists in the Lahaina Arts Society welcomed me with open arms. I meant to leave in two weeks, but that didn’t happen.”

Today, Allan lives with his wife Janet on a two-acre parcel in verdant Kula, at the 4,000-foot level of Haleakala Volcano. The 90 different varieties of native Hawaiian plants, trees and flowers that flourish on their property and the fabulous views they enjoy of Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Molokini islet, West Maui, and Maalaea and Kahului bays are constant sources of inspiration for his work. So are Maui people at work and play, cattle, horses, seascapes, landscapes—Allan sees the potential for a painting in every place, everything, everyone.

Although he has been inspired by work he has admired in museums all over the world—from prehistoric cave sketches to contemporary paintings—he regards Claude Monet and other impressionists as his major influences. “I believe impressionism has lasted for 150 years because the viewer is unknowingly involved in creating the painting,” he says. “If you get close to an impressionist painting, it looks very loose and lacks any kind of detail, but at viewing distance—anywhere from three to 16 feet away depending on the size of the painting—it becomes realistic in your eye. That’s what makes it exciting; you’re actually helping to pull the painting together.”

Allan believes creating art encourages people to learn more about themselves and their environment. Anyone, he asserts, can do it.

“Approach art as a personal thing, as if you’re writing a diary,” he suggests. “No one but you has to see it so what it looks like doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’ve become aware of your surroundings—the colors, shapes and textures that exist in a particular place at a particular time—and you’ve documented it. You have your own style, your own way of seeing things, and you’re going to wind up with a wonderful record of how you view the world.”

Rather than brushes, Allan uses a three-inch palette knife, which produces strokes that range from very smooth to heavy impasto. He says, “An advantage of the palette knife is if you don’t over mix colors, individual slivers of color remain within the stroke to make it lively and bright.”

Allan will go to a location early in the morning and try to finish the painting in a couple of hours because as the sun gets higher in the sky, the light and shadows change, and the scene takes on a whole different look. He also paints in his studio at home, using photographs for reference. But, he points out, "Photos are like jotting notes; they're distorted, their colors and values—from the darkest shadows under and inside foliage to the lightest highlights anywhere the sun is directly hitting—aren't true, and they only show a small piece of the vast scene in front of you. They also don't show the subtleties and details you see when you're out in nature."

A skilled, sensitive artist, Allan asserts, "can take ordinary places and people doing ordinary things and make them extraordinary. Art imbues the mundane with a touch of magic."