Dramatic change at Kilauea inspires new art, an exhibition and an album cover!
Kilauea’s lava lake at Halema‘uma‘u crater has come alive forty-seven times since December 2024, showcasing towering lava fountains and coursing molten rivers! This photo-rich story highlights those eruptions and the art I created inspired by them. Also, two eruption paintings were displayed at the 2025 MANA invitational show, and a volcano painting was selected by the composer of Tiki Nation to adorn his new album cover!
So the years 2025-2026 were punctuated by plenty of ‘wow’ moments!
Photos by Catherine Robbins and Tom Peek unless otherwise noted.
In April 2026, Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes, erupted with a 1,000-foot-tall lava fountain.
Three miles from the erupting crater, my husband, author Tom Peek, and I live in a cottage nestled in the rainforest. When not at the caldera’s edge, we watch the eruption’s nighttime glow from our lanai and hear the distant roar of its giant lava fountains. In the sixteen months since the beginning of the eruption, our lives have increasingly revolved around our active volcanic neighbor–Pele and her fiery fountains.
On the highway heading home, Tom and I were enthralled by the June 2026 eruptive plume, its billowing clouds illuminated by the lava fountain at its base.
The night view from our lanai during an eruption.
The eruptions have enticed Tom and me again and again to the caldera rim where we stand riveted by Pele’s beauty and creative power. Before traveling to the caldera’s edge, I feel my “lavadrenaline” rise in anticipation of witnessing Pele’s artful handiwork as she recreates Kilauea’s summit landscape . . . and inspires my own creative flow.
On December 24, 2024, the second night of Episode 1, I gazed, awestruck, at the molten lava lake, its moving surface painting the crater wall and clouds in a crimson hue.
In preparation for each trek to the caldera rim, our ‘go bags’ stand ready by the back door as we track USGS webcam images and data streams. When we sense that Pele may imminently erupt, we grab our gear, dash out the door and head, day or night, to a select viewing spot on the rim.
A spectacular 1,000-foot-tall fountain jetted out of the vents in June 2025.
Lava fountains, rising to 600 and 200 feet high, poured molten rivers across the lake surface at dawn on April 22, 2025.
Watch this SPECTACULAR VIDEO news report on the Episode 47 eruption!
In March 2026, a 1,500 foot lava fountain pelted us with falling tephra. Those specks on the photo are airborne tephra—a lightweight glassy volcanic rock.
I stood amid the deluge of tephra and roar, humbled to be in the presence of such power as I endeavored to not breathe it in or get it into my eyes!
Sixteen months of continuous change!
Terra firma isn’t so firm on Kilauea! An enormous amount of lava is emitted from the eruptive fountains. Some of it courses as a lava river across the surface of the ever-deepening lava lake. And some is ejected forcefully into the air, landing downwind as tephra—reticulite, ash and Pele’s hair.
The lava lake at Halema‘uma‘u has changed dramatically since the beginning of the eruption on December 23, 2024. These changes include a much higher lake, the creation of a towering double-vented spatter cone and a huge cone of tephra behind the vents on the crater rim.
The lava lake on March 20, 2025. The sloping ledge on the left is a good marker of the lava’s depth. Notice the growing cone at the base of the lava fountain and note the cone’s distance below the crater rim.
The lava lake on March 26, 2026. The sloping ledge on the left is now almost covered by lava! And the cone that the vent sits on almost reaches the crater rim! Also, check out the one-hundred-fifty-foot-tall tephra cone on the rim behind the vent! Wow!
For more Kilauea and Mauna Loa eruption photos, see the photo-rich stories on the Tom Peek author website.
Inspiration flows like lava
Witnessing this sixteen-month eruption with its 47 episodes has stirred me to create new oil paintings. After each episode, my fingers tingle to paint!
Back in the studio, I practice Qigong and meditation to empty my mind as the composition of the next painting becomes clearer in my mind’s eye. Only then, with a clear mind and no expectations or plans, do I pick up the paintbrush and put color on the canvas.
Qigong practice heightens my sensitivity and has been a foundation for the composition and color selection in all of my artworks. It deepens and expands my intuition. With a calm mind, humility and gratitude, I better sense the essence of the place or plant that I’m painting with no plan or expectation for the artwork to turn out a certain way. I paint what I sensed in the field and I follow its lead.
Spring Forest Qigong is the practice I also apply beyond my artwork, including during recent worldwide meditations to heal the planet and its inhabitants.
Qigong grandmaster Chunyi Lin (center, blue sweater), founder of Spring Forest Qigong and my teacher for twenty years, chants with Tibetan monks in Minnesota. (January 8, 2025 screenshot.)
I felt honored to have three artworks displayed in the 2025 MANA Invitational Art Show at the Wailoa Art Center in Hilo. Designers Nelson and Kainoa Makua of Na Makua were the organizers and creative inspiration for this annual show held during the internationally renowned Merrie Monarch Hula Festival.
Two of my oil paintings at the 2025 MANA Invitational Art Show at the Wailoa Art Center in Hilo. “Pele’s Release” (top) and “The Dance” both depict the current eruptive activity at Halema‘uma‘u.
The Wailoa Art Center in Hilo.
Last fall, composer and musician Bob Kress asked for permission to incorporate my oil painting “Pele’s Release” into the cover design of his next album cover, “Tiki Nation.” The original of the work adorns his home on the continent. The digital album was also released as a vinyl LP (pictured below).
“Pele’s Release” was selected by Bob Kress, music composer for the album “Tiki Nation” for his digital and vinyl album covers. Photo by Mello Exotica.
Mello Exotica, the album’s manufacturer, described the music as “a cinematic debut that expands modern exotica into wide-open sky . . . an ode to Hawai‘i’s Big Island and the soft trade winds of Pacific afternoons . . . Kress blends primal rhythm, native flute textures, and subtle electronic distortion into something both grounded and atmospheric. This is music for explorers, surfers, and day-trippers—for anyone who knows paradise isn’t a postcard.”
They continued “The album’s cover art is an original oil painting by Hawai‘i Island-based artist Catherine Robbins, created in her rainforest studio below Kīlauea’s erupting summit. Her elemental palette—lava reds, jungle greens, Pacific blues—captures the spirit of the record: grounded in earth, carried by wind.”
And the eruption and its inspiration continues . . .
On April 23, 2026 a red rainbow appeared behind us as we gazed into the lava lake. White rainbows, illuminated by the moon, are not uncommon in the islands but that dark night the moon had already set. The Pele rainbow was created by the only light source around, the lava fountain shown in this story’s first photo. Maika‘i!
Tom Peek