10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 29 of 30
Painting Diary 29 of 30: Sanctuary, 2019
Soon after we moved into our new home out in the woods of Duvall, Washington we got hit with the biggest wind storm they’d had here in many years. We lost power for several days as the county tried to sort out the overwhelming disaster. We shared a generator with our landlord, lugging the beast back and forth between our two houses to try and keep the refrigerator cool enough and have a hot shower. That was fun. We lived.
A few weeks latter it started to snow. Then it snowed more. Then it snowed even more. Again we lost power. This time, with almost three feet of snow on the ground, we first had to shovel a path between our homes before we could get the generator up to our house. That was also a lot of fun, if not a bit backbreaking. I’ve never lived anywhere that got that much snow. The landlord said it was more than twenty years since it snowed that much out here.
We live at the end of a long road, one driveway before the end of county maintenance sign but the county decided that the whole road wasn’t their problem and they totally abandon us. They refused to plough the road and for 10 days we couldn’t leave the house. Luckily we had enough food to last and after a few days the power came back on. It ended up being one of our favorite weeks of the year. We were stranded in paradise and with nowhere to be we got to stay home and paint and have snowball fights for more than a week.
In honor of that special time I painted this tree. While the tree lives at the end of our driveway, the background it appears in lives only in my imagination. I couldn’t help but light the forest on fire in the background. I liked the idea of a heaven and hell kind of paining. Thats just how I roll.
It’s called Sanctuary, a title I feel sums up the way we feel about our new home out here in the woods. Why didn’t I leave the city years ago? I guess Seattle was right for me for many years and now here I am, on to the next chapter…
Sanctuary, acrylic on board, 2019