This prolific painter, printmaker and teacher was born in Honolulu in 1945, the fifth generation of a Maui Portuguese family. Tony makes his home on the slopes of Haleakala close to the natural beauty that forms such a strong inspiration for his elegant works of subtle, evocative power. The artist explains, "If one can see past the beauty of the landscape, you realize what an intensely strong and warm light there is here. It infuses everything. It is very similar to that of the Mediterranean. I absolutely love it!" As an artist, his references to nature and landscape are not deliberate nor direct. As Marcia Godinez, art writer for the Maui News has written, "...this artist has climbed inside his subject matter and reduced it to undiluted essence."

In his work, the formal concerns of surface, the velocity of the brush stroke, and the impact of color hold dialogue with artist and audience, revealing an image that connects with our common humanity. "I think works of art can be seen as footprints left behind by one who lives a conscious and examined life," he suggests. His works are highly charged aesthetically, not with mere decoration, but with the struggles and victories of life.

With a master's degree from the University of Oregon in 1972, Tony placed himself in two years of apprenticeship on Oahu. In 1974, he left the island on a sojourn of self-discovery in Europe and Africa. He held his first solo show in 1991 in Honolulu. The influences of his sojourn combined with his abiding interest in psychology, mythology and poetry were apparent in his work. This drew the attention of Joseph Campbell who stated, "I see that you, too, are in the service of the White Goddess."

Duane Preble, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Art, University of Hawaii, and author of the book, Artforms, has noted that Tony has achieved one of the most difficult things in art today: to have mastered the visual language of Abstract Expressionism... and to do so with a style immediately recognizable as his own. The result is powerfully strong works of "substance, subtlety and beauty."

Tony feels he made a breakthrough in 1992 with a series of paintings known as the Vessel Series. "It was not so much a breakthrough in technique or approach so much as a shift in how I saw these works as relating to me and the viewer outside my studio. I saw the work not on a metaphoric or a symbolic level, but as being a vessel of energy transmitted to the viewer through active perception of color and form." As such, the artist saw the possibility for art opening a sacred space with none of the trappings of the past.

"Ostensibly, my work might be classified as being of the school of abstract expressionism. However, the first generation of 'abstract expressionist' painters did not refer to themselves as such, nor did they coin the phrase. They preferred the term 'abstract automatism' to refer to both their work and the process by which it was created. Psychic automatism was the creative impulse of the surrealists, automatic writing was the tool of compostition in their literature, a like form of 'psychic doodling' was the source of their painted images. Abstract automatism took this process a step further by getting rid of the narrative element. Painting was finally free of the need to be a window.

"Precisely, I begin with a doodle and observe with my total being the process that unfolds... orchestrating cadenzas of color, arpeggios of line. It is a matter of balances and nuance; rhythms, tonalities and weight. To take the image to the brink and stopping before it collapses into chaos. Out of the process something emerges that can border on the profound and is utterly true and utterly human as much as it can be transcendent."