About the Auction

The Lahaina Fire on August 8th was the deadliest in modern American history. The fire burned though 80% of the town and left its surviving residents facing a deeply uncertain future. 

Lahaina was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii and it is known for its rich culture & arts community. The town is beloved by the thousands of artists who have found both welcome and inspiration there.  

In support of Lahaina’s efforts to rebuild, we are organizing an auction of original artwork by artists from all over the world. 

All auction proceeds will go to the Maui Pono Foundation, an organization founded by Lahaina families to help their many displaced neighbors recover after the fire. In addition to funding direct relief, the Maui Pono Foundation has generously committed to support efforts to enable artists in West Maui to play a key role in restoring the community they love. 

In buying one (or several) of these paintings, you will be directly helping heal this treasured town. Please donate now and bid in the auction

Art detail: Lahaina artist Carleton Kincade

sponsoring organizations

Mahalo to the following organizations who have helped get the word out to their artists members and collectors. With their help, we’ll be able to send Lahaina some major support.

About us

  • Kathleen Hudson

    Kathleen is an artist in Colorado and serves on the board of the Plein Air Painters of America. Before painting full time, she worked as Communications Director for a Boston nonprofit and co-founded an academic preparedness initiative in South Africa.

  • Heather Burton Santillanes

    Heather is a Colorado artist who lived in Lahaina during some very formative years of her life and career. Through teaching in Maui schools and raising her son on the island, she developed a close network of friends and has played a key role in shaping the vision for the auction.

  • John Burton

    John is a Carmel, CA based artist who is a signature member in Plein Air Painters of America and the California Art Club and now works full time in the film industry as a production designer. He has grown to love Lahaina and its people during numerous trips to Maui.

  • Lisa Camilla Hale

    Lisa is an artist in Boulder, Colorado who played a key role in organizing logistics for an online art auction to benefit Florida’s Forgotten Coast following Huricane Michael in 2018. When we reached out to her, she immediately dove in and uploaded the majority of nearly 1,000 paintings to Artists for Lahaina.

Volunteers

A huge thank you to Agatha Zbik, Elaine Breeden Penrose, Sarah Scherer, Danna Tartaglia, Sheri Farabaugh, and Gail Beveridge for their invaluable help in arranging shipments of nearly 800 paintings following the auction.

FAQs

  • Paintings are hosted in three galleries on the platform Betterworld, which is itself a nonprofit and charges no fees for hosting fundraising auctions. You can find links to all the artwork here. You can create a profile on Betterworld to bid, save your favorite pieces to keep an eye on them, and place a max bid to increase your chances of getting the paintings you like most.

  • Unfortunately, BetterWorld doesn’t have a search feature on the auction pages. But you can check our guide to see how to locate work by a particular artists in the auction.

  • Yes, for 20% above the listed gallery price of a painting, you can buy a piece before the auction close. Contact us by the end of the day on Friday, 9/22 to facilitate this.

  • Artists will ship work directly to winning bidders. A member of our team will get in touch via email with the artist and winning bidder, and you can arrange shipping directly to ensure that you are able to receive the artwork at the correct address. Except in a few cases, buyers should plan to reimburse artists for shipping costs.

  • All of the pieces in the auction are original artwork. Because the auction in online-only, it would have created some confusion to mix prints and original work since bidders can only see digital images of the works. But because we opened the auction to any artist who wanted to submit a piece, there are paintings available for a large range of prices. Gallery 3 features some very affordable original work—and remember, all the proceeds go to Maui.

  • The Betterword auction is linked directly via Stripe (an online payment processor) to the accounts for Maui Pono Foundation’s fiscal sponsor organization, who will deposit the funds in a designated account for Maui Pono Foundation’s efforts in Lahaina. We are in close communication with the leadership of Maui Pono, and they have invited members of our team to serve on the committee that will create grant criteria and select grant recipients in Maui. That means we will be able to keep you posted on exactly how the auction proceeds are impacting families in Lahaina after the fire.