Places That Are Nolonger
Memories of Mount St. Helens
Tucked up against the Gifford Pinchot National Forrest, a mile below Spirit Lake was my family's mountain cabin. It's now under 300 feet of mud and debre from the 1980 eruption and part of the Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument.
Memories of Mount St. Helens
Tucked up against the Gifford Pinchot National Forrest, a mile below Spirit Lake was my family's mountain cabin. It's now under 300 feet of mud and debre from the 1980 eruption and part of the Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument.
My second painting in the series. Created from a few photos and memory of part of the Toutle River a half mile below Spirit Lake near our cabin. This painting is loosely designed like a painting of the early masters. The mountain is the center like the Madonna. The snow covered tree limbs on the left are shaped like birds flying towards her. With the river flowing down to the lower right of the painting, the dark raptor over the snow covered river edge balances the painting by completing a triangle in the composition.
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This painting is from one of my first photos taken by little instamatic camera I received as a gift at Christmas. My family is hiking through the snow to our cabin. It was a half mile from the road. My sister Sarah is building a snowball to toss at me. She missed. I could not toss one back because I was in charge of carrying a box with our cat Katie warmly tucked inside. I placed it on the ground to take this photo. We are almost to our cabin. It's beyond the trees on the left.
This painting I increased the size of the people to three times the size in the photo to give the painting a warm feeling and not ominous feeling the huge size of the trees and forrest that surrounded us. We were out in the middle of nowhere. |
A painting I created from a photo I took from my camera when I was 12. That is Mount St Helens from the center of Spirit Lake. We had a small powered boat and we took it to different bays around Spirit Lake to swim, fish and picnic. I am working on a painting of my sister eating baked cheese snaps by blue bell in the boat. The weekends were the only time we were allowed chips and pop. There is another painting of Sarah and I swimming in the lake near Bear Creek with folks in a red canoe paddling by behind us.
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My first painting created of Mount St. Helens was based upon a memory of a sunny morning hike to Meta Lake. The trail from where we parked lead to the edge of a clear cut and followed along the tree line before disappearing into the forest again. Before reaching this clear cut a large raptor flew right over our heads below the tree limbs. Then another! It was quite alarming to have large raptors flying so close in the trees. The hawks were catching the thermals from the cliff side in front of us and looping high over the trees. They were playing with the thermals climbing the cleared hillside.
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This area is the clearing near our cabin. It was once the farming and grazing area of the Lange family homestead. It was a large area where my sister and I were allowed to go and ride my snowmobile. Around and around we would ride. In this painting Sarah jumped the log. I am 13 years old and she is 10. That is Mount St Helens behind us. Yes, we were very close to the mountain. About a mile below Spirit Lake.
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