past the mountains

 

I took a long-awaited weekend getaway with my pod of 4 to Soap Lake, WA recently (pre-snowstorm). The idea was to get out of the gloom of the Puget Sound cloud basin for a few days and get some vitamin D and fresh air! It's always dazzling to clear the Cascade mountains and find yourself in a completely new dry, open landscape. Shelby brought along a houseplant (seen between the front seats) for our journey, which actually felt very comforting. 

 

We hiked up Steamboat Rock one morning. The Columbia River Gorge is always so stunning. While sketching these scenes, I wished to be a bird 15,000 years ago, to witness the great flood: when the Missoula ice dam broke and blasted about 500 cubic miles of water (!!!) through this landscape.

Later I sketched my pod friends back at the cabin, where we took a singular bath in the Soap Lake water piped in from nearby.

 

On the way back to Seattle, Alex gave us a short tour of Vantage, where he used to rock climb. I sketched some climbers scaling the basalt columns in pencil & watercolored it at home. Then we got stuck in Snoqualmie Pass traffic for two hours and I reflected on the dramatic change of landscape (dry, open & sunny to a snowstorm in a high altitude forest) that just an hour's drive gets you in Washington.

healing waters

I was invited to an artist retreat in Soap Lake, Washington a few weeks ago. It was kind of a test run for some tourism initiatives happening in the area. It was a super interesting trip and I had the pleasure to meet a group of very creative and invigorating fellow artists! Very excited to share the video & photo documentation soon, which were expertly and artistically handled by Alex Tsway.

It was my first trip through the Cascades and out the other side. I knew it would be Different but it was still so jarring to be in such a hot, dry area compared to the lush areas in the Puget Sound.



This old house caught my eye on a walk through the tiny center of town. A child (who rode up on their bike and was fascinated by what I was doing) told me that no one lives there anymore. My goal for myself that weekend was to use a lot of mixed media, and this painting was a truly disaster until I brought out my trusty fat white paint marker, then it kind of resolved itself in the muted areas.

We were so out & about all the time I didn't actually get to sketch that much! Exploring is great but every place I go just makes me feel like I've seen so little. I could spend a month exploring and sketching on, like, Vashon Island and not get tired of it, and that's just a little island. If we had just one mountain range, that would be more than enough for me, but instead we have TWO! Or if we had just one kind of climate and landscape, great. But there's such a big state out there. It's TOO MUCH.