Live Event Paintings

I paint oil paintings, live, at wedding receptions and events, anywhere in the world. Click my profile to find my email, or call (206) 382-7413.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Stiebers-Edwards Wedding, Alderbrook Resort, Union, Washington, August 17, 2013




This was the fourth time I’ve painted at this great retreat, and I look forward to many more.
The two favorite ways for guests to arrive at Alderbrook Resort are by float plane, or by yacht. We vendors take the third, least expensive option.
We boarded a ferry in Seattle, then drove. The Kitsap Peninsula is shaped like the head of a cuttlefish, cradled on the east by the arms and fingers of Puget Sound, and on the west by the long, bent arm of Hood Canal. Some fifteen miles from Bremerton, we reached the muddy tip of the broad Canal (technically a fjord), and tooled fifteen miles more past the vacation homes that line its oyster caked beaches. It’s a woody, meandering road, smelling of fir, cedar, and saltwater. The hundred year old Alderbrook is suddenly there on the right.

You could say this wedding was a marriage of blondes and beards. I got to paint plenty of both. There were the two year old twin boys, dressed like the little Dutch boy on the paint can, with blue pacifiers, who walked down the path bearing a sign that read “Here Comes the Bride;” there were the blond, freckled flower girls, in sparkly silver-grayish taupe summer dresses that easily accommodated their spontaneous soccer playing, and their sparkly feathery pink flapper skull caps pinned at a tilt. There were feathers in the flower arrangements too— the bride’s family supplies hundreds of thousands of chicken eggs a day for the region’s breakfast tables. I guess with that many chickens, you get feathers everywhere.
The well-whiskered groom, who’s family is in the boat business, turned out to be an amiable conversationalist, as he stood for his portrait. His equally well whiskered best man/brother stated in his toast that the groom could “talk to anybody about anything— he could talk to you for half an hour about your belt buckle.”
It was an unhurried wedding, in an unhurried place. It feels like a vacation every time I paint here. You can bet I swam in the Canal before we left.


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