Kapa Kahiko, Original Watercolor by Cindy Conklin
“The Patterns and colors I used in these individual watercolor squares were inspired by Kapa. Kapa which is still created today is often patterned using bamboo stamps and natural dyes. The bark cloth created laboriously by the Hawaiians and by contemporary artists and craftsmen from plant material takes days to prepare.
Many fine examples of Kapa exist in museum collections. I have not copied patterns from any of these. Rather, I have let myself be inspired by the spirit of Kapa, inventing patterns of my own in colors like those which might have been used long ago and also in a contemporary pallet. This series takes a path begun in my earlier work which included figured and petroglyph images. The beauty of the color together with the raw edges the paper made this direction inevitable. ” – Cindy Conklin
