Sauvie Island

On a beautiful sunny afternoon, I headed away from Portland, OR, where I had some business to attend to, and then proceeded west on Highway 30 until I came to the turn across the Sauvie Island bridge that leads to this farming island. “Had it really been 20 years since I had last laid eyes on this spectacular spot?” I asked myself. I remembered coming here to paint pumpkin patches, agricultural fields, and unique tree formations that had just as unique cloud formations in the skies, which served as a background for them. Sauvie Island is the largest island on the Columbia River and lies just 10 miles northwest of downtown Portland, Oregon. This island was established in the late 1940s to protect wetland habitats and covers an area of 12,000 acres. It is a painter’s paradise. To be outside in mid-October, amidst the bird migration and falling leaves, I am left with an abundance of gratitude, instantly regretting all of my petty complaints. I stopped at Racoon Point about an hour before dusk. There was a group of Plein-Air painters, just packing up as I started setting up my easel. I recognized this very spot as the same place I had painted when I last visited so many years ago. I painted a small 8 x 10, focusing on design, composition, and color, all the while listening to the symphony of geese flying overhead in their perfect formations. The foreground features a small creek with lush greenery on either side. The dark settled in and around, but I finished right at the brink of the blackening skies. As I settled into my own sleep, camping off-road, I felt a profound sense of completion, not of the painting itself, but of making the most of what could have been just an ordinary day.