One week left in Seattle and then we hop on the plane for a new adventure in Costa Rica.  Mostly, packing has consisted of purging, the getting rid of and lightening, but I’m willing to carry a few items for sentimental reasons.  I will paint in Costa Rica.  I’m packing all my paints but I can’t realistically take all my paintings. I’ve settled on five and as usual they tell a collective story not only of my painting, but the reasons why we have made this decision to pick it all up and try something new for our family.

A Beautiful Mind (c) Marika Reinke 2015

Unusual Weather (c) Marika Reinke 2015 Watercolor

Life Begins at Sea (c) Marika Reinke 2015

Daire’s Dragon (c) Marika Reinke 2015 Watercolor

A Wedding Vow After 12 Years (c) Marika Reinke Sept 2014 Watercolor

I’ll start at the beginning.

It has now been 13 years married and a partnership 15 years old.  But the sentiment of A Wedding Vow After 12 Years so perfectly describes the complexity of our marriage.  And believe me, this big move, the huge purging of a very settled life, the intentionally unsettling and the transition time is creating a few more explosions, merging and reconstituting.  We move in hopes of realizing some dreams but also in reconnecting over a slower paced life too.  This big change is also a renewal of our vows and the painting is a worthy reminder.

Continuing with the theme of bringing our family closer together, Daire’s Very Not Perfect and Wonderfully Uncompromising Dragon is dedicated to my son and his initial rendering, but also an illustration of the stubborn insistence on believing in magic and that you can have just about everything, even if it contradicts itself.  Because we believe this, we move to Costa Rica just to see what happens.

Life Begins at Sea is a painting based on my daughter’s drawing and commitment to our family.  But this also illustrates our commitment to sustainability and the natural world, not to mention we will be living in an area saturated with many nesting sea turtles.  The school the kids will be going to, La Paz Community School, is also committed to the legacy of sustainability and is a strong motivation for sending them there.  This one must come.

Unusual Weather is one of my personal favorites.  It is a story of climate change. As rapidly as the world is changing around us, I feel a deep need to go see it before it all slips away and reforms itself.  This is why now is the time; not retirement, not when the kids are out of the house.  Now.  Those years in the future are filled with doubt and likely unlike anything it is now when these other milestones hit.  I want my kids to have memories of the way the world is now, not an urban life or in the shadow of collective political panic of climate disruption.  Now we go.

A Beautiful Mind is dedicated to my son again, who we recently found out is dyslexic (and as a result we found out my husband is too). This realization has reconnected me to my passion for education, specifically for dyslexics and educational justice. I have been fascinated by the study this summer and will spend the next couple years helping my son literally re-wire his brain to become as fluent a reader as he can be. It represents another renewed commitment to the best I can give my family, not to mention I think the painting rocks.

They are now rolled up and waiting for their next adventures, just like us.