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| The Pohl-Drake Wedding, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 40 inches, by Sam Day |
The Pohl-Drake wedding was, for the bride, just a visit to Grandma's house for some blackberry pie— along with 275 guests.
The bride rides horses, and has fond memories of visiting her
grandmother’s summer house on
Bainbridge Island, and picking blackberries. The
groom rides everything else— but chiefly motocross bikes. That’s why, during
his father’s toast, his brother rode through the tent on the front seat of a
tandem bicycle, with an English saddle on the back seat, and a hobby horse tied
to the front (I painted that in the lower left corner).
The grandmother’s summer house is situated in an enclave known
as The Country Club of Seattle, wherein eighteen estates on a wooded hill are
surrounded by a grassy apron of equestrian paradise, nine holes of golf, and
Puget Sound. The ceremony was in a tent on the lawn looking south at
Blake Island and west to
Rich Passage.
Cocktails were held a few hundred yards to the east, in another white
tent right on
Restoration Point. I set up my easel in the final reception tent,
northernmost of the three, pitched within a wooden railed equestrian circle,
not far from the barn, looking east. The view stretched from
Blakely Harbor on
the left, to the cocktail tent on the right, seen just over the hill. One can
see Seattle from here, over the blackberry bushes that line the shore. The tall
skyline appears in my painting just left of the cocktail tent.
Blakely Rock is
just 800 yards off the pebbly beach, in the center of the painting, where a
sailboat passes. A
Washington State Ferry is seen leaving
Eagle Harbor en route
to Seattle.
The tent itself was a hundred and fifty feet wide, open to the
view on the water side, and decorated with elegant antiques (Vintage Ambiance)
in subdued colors. Erected as it was in a horse’s trotting ring, the floor was
grass, cut golf course short, and combed clean as a carpet. I painted barefoot
(by permission), and believe me, it was immaculate.
The wedding was semiformal. The groom wore a plaid suit with a
bow tie, like an English gentleman. The groomsmen wore dark suits and bow ties
of various colors; the bridesmaids each wore something boldly unique. The bride
wore lace. Everyone wore broad smiles.
There was a dance floor and a stage. Dinner was serenaded by
an unamplified
bluegrass band, The
Tallboys. After dinner,
The Craig Lawrence Band played everything from jazz to classic rock and current pop.
Locally sourced
Blackberry pie was served along with the
coconut cake (bottom right, on the table behind Grandma).
