Mary Koski - Artist of Hawaii - Hawaiian Paintings and Artwork

The Artist

Born in San Diego, California, Mary Koski began her career as a professional artist at the age of seventeen. Talented in art, ballet and music, she majored in art at the University of California at Santa Barbara and at Mexico City college in Mexico City. While in Mexico City she met and married her husband who was there with the Finnish embassy. Later they moved to the United States where their three children were born and where Mary began to paint in earnest. During the years that followed her career blossomed in California, Texas, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

In 1970 she began an extended painting tour of Europe with commissions and exhibitions in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Scandinavia.

In 1983 when she moved with her husband, her mother, daughter Kathy Long and her husband and their baby daughter, she felt as though she had come home. Robert Cazimero, the well known singer and entertainer, describes her as "a Hawaiian soul, who only happened to be born in another part of the world."

Many of Mary's Children Of Hawaii Calendars, which were published for over a decade by Island Heritage, have become collector's items. Her books, "The Stowaway Fairy in Hawaii", "The Stowaway Fairy's Volcano Adventure" and "The Stowaway Fairy Goes To Japan", are beloved by children and collectors alike. She has also illustrated the "Little Princess Kaiulani and Her Garden By The Sea" written by Ellie Crowe, and written and illustrated a little book of paintings and poetry called "Tiny Treasures" which is now out of print. For 15 years she has painted a painting each year for the Honolulu Rotary Club's "Celebrity Auction For The Prevention of Child Abuse." Many of those paintings are on the walls of Kapiolani Women's and Children's Hospital in Honolulu. Over the past 20 years she has had countless one woman shows and also two woman shows with daughter Kathy Long and a number of three woman shows with daughter Kathy and her daughter Megan.

The Person

I have always thought of myself as being like a potted plant--moving easily from place to place--flourishing and blooming, but always trying to peer over the window sill to see what adventure awaited.

When we arrived in Hawaii I said to myself "here I will put down roots!" And so I have. They have grown deep into the fertile volcanic soil of Waimea and here I will stay. Twenty two years is the longest I have ever lived in one place and it has been wonderful!

What would you like to know about me? I am first and foremost a wife and mother and now grandmother. I'm sorry to ruin the mystique of the exotic artist, but I am a very normal person who would not be out of place living next door to you and running over to have a chat or borrow a cup of sugar.

Together with our daughter Kathy (please visit Kathy's website at www.kathylongartist.com) and her husband Bertil Long my husband and I have created a pleasant family compound right in the center of little Waimea on the Big Island of Hawaii. We have a big yard in common, shaded by an immense False Olive tree. I call our yard an "Ahh garden", because when people come through our front gate they are very likely to go "Ahh, it's so pretty--like a secret garden!" Children and even some adults swear that they have seen fairies flitting around through the leaves. I wouldn't be surprised. I have had a life-long love affair with fairies and I am sure there are many in the house as well. (I do wish they could keep from hiding things though!)

My husband Oiva has managed my art career for many years and it has been a very fine relationship. He is Management and I am Labor, so he has had to be very kind and good to me--which he would have been anyway, being the wonderful man that he is.

We have three children and six grandchildren now and they are all most wonderful. I wish that the boys and their families lived closer to us, but we have Kathy's family next door and that has been an unalloyed blessing. I will always feel grateful that we were allowed to help raise their two children and in doing so relive those wonderful days when the house was full of sunshine and children's laughter. It's quieter now that the children are grown, but we miss the racket and look forward eagerly to their visits.

Although I do paint many things, and enjoy striking out on something new and different occasionally, I guess this has to be what you would call my "mission statement."

"For years I painted still-life, beautiful objects, and portraits of dignified business men and lovely ladies. I didn't really mean to become a painter of fairies and children, but they captured me with their innocence and charm, their delight in life and, of course, their incredible beauty. ultimately, I really didn't have much choice."