All of us who tee it up even semi-regularly have random golf thoughts -- about your swing, a favorite hole, a favorite course, a rare and blessed moment of glory.
But for the golfer-as-artist, those thoughts are an inspiration to create. Call it strokes of genius, even if their game isn't up to par.
It's been that way since the Scots first got the idea of creating golf as a justifiable means of missing church on Sunday mornings. Links, when the game was born more than 500 years ago in Scotland, was a broad public area beside the sea used for archery, equestrian activities, soccer, strolling hand-in-hand and golf. Artists brought palettes and easels to the shore to paint. In golfers, they found the stuff of art: a range of human emotions and conditions, set against dramatic natural scenery. Since the 1600s, British and Scottish royalty have been painted while playing golf, as have club captains at Muirfield and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. And "golf art" has evolved into a minor international industry.
That tradition is alive and well in Hawaii today. In fact, golf art is bigger than ever, nationally and locally. Golf World magazine in January declared that "all those old fox hunting, polo and lanscape paintings are out.. Paintings of St. Andrews or any other kind of golf art is in."
Golf art is so hot that last year the PGA Tour asked several stars to do self-portraits. They were sold as a charity fund-raiser.
In Hawaii, the popularity of golf art has a lot to do with two on-going booms -- in the number of people playing golf and in the resultant number of golf courses being built.
That's why Hawaii Golfer put a painting of the 16th hole at the Kiele Course at Kauai Lagoons on the cover of the spring edition. Titled "First Light on Kauai Lagoons," it is part of Kauai artist D.J. Khamis' series of first light paintings of Hawaii golf courses. Others include the cliffside 16th hole at Poipu Bay on Kauai and the par-3 15th hole over 200 yards of turquoise sea at Mauna Lani's South Course.
(We're in good company. Golf Illustrated put golf paintings on its cover for 12 issues in a row.)
Khamis finds inspiration easy -- he works in a beachside studio at Poipu, not far from the 16th hole.
He came to art by a rather unusual route. Khamis started out as an architect and won seven national awards for his designs before taking up painting in 1974. He's studied art in London and Rome, but these days prefers Hawaii themes. His style is super-real and has a phtographic accuracy. His works are available at Montage Gallery on Kauai, Kahn Gallery and Return to Paradise gallery on oahu and Coast gallery on Maui.
The good news for lovers of both golf and art is that Khamis is not the only practitioner of par painting in paradise.
Cosmio Propellor, for instance, has been "rather amazed, actually" at sales of his series of "Zen Moments in Golf" series.
"I think it's because I try to express that moment of enlightenment, that sweet spot in time, that the mind's eye conceives and which you feel throughout your whole being when you connect, but which defies words," says Cosmio.
He was recently commissioned by the Royal & August National Golf Club of hawaii to paint their captains. And while shooting photographs of his works for this story outside his Diamond Head studio, he sold one of the paintings to a guy driving by in Mercedes convertible.
Art is also a big part of the PGA Tour Kapalua International. Tournament founder Mark Rolfing annually commissions a local artist to create a poster for the tournament. Past artists include Guy Buffet, Jan Kasprzycki and Brett Hayes. Many of the original works hang in Mark's oceanfront home, with international golf paintings.
As you enter the Plantation Course at Kapalua, site of the tournament, pastoral paintings of the course by Betty Hay-Freeland greet you. Golf paintings by George Allen and Pam Andolin Cameron decorate the Plantation House restaurant.
As we were recently reminded in admiring Hays-Freeland's works, the great thing about a golf art is that no matter what your most recent scorecard looks like, the painting remains lovely.
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