Discovering the lost paintings of a master on Kauai: Leonard Herbert

Sometimes life-changing lessons come in unexpected ways

My art teacher Leonard Herbert’s little ground floor apartment was painted a blinding bone white that amplified the sun of a hot Hawaii day.  Louvered windows, common on Kauai, were covered by filmy curtains that blew in the breeze. I was ten or eleven years old.

In the nineteen seventies, our family seldom left the lush green jungle of the North Shore for Kauai’s capital “city” of Lihue, but when we did, Mom made the most of the trip to do errands not possible in our very rural area. A trip to “town” was a production involving a massive shopping list for Big Save and Woolworth’s, and a stop at the laundromat and the library, too.

I felt lucky that day to be spared the round of errands, but apprehensive as I stood nervously in the doorway, rubbing one bare foot against the other as I glanced around a small sitting room. An easel set up in one corner and a desk with a stool beside it faced a sun-faded Hawaiian print couch in front of a coffee table, upon which rested a bright, fake-looki…