Woman creates beautiful art on driveway with power washer

What happens when an artist gets a power washer? Something amazing.

Dianna Wood said she has wanted a power washer for years.

"There is something so therapeutic about seeing dirty siding, fences, bricks and cement go from yuck to clean," Wood wrote on her blog.

And for her 59th birthday, her husband bought her one.

She said over the last month, she's used it to wash everything she could find outside her home. She saved her driveway for last because she knew it would require a lot of work.

But when it came time to finally started the project, she realized how much art she could create on such a large canvas.

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"I realized that I could do word art in one-tenth the time that it would take to power-wash the entire driveway and it would allow me to leave most of the dirty part dirty," she said.

She started with words and then images, and the result is stunning.

Her Burlington, North Carolina, driveway is now "painted" with flowers and birds.

The pictures that she's shared on her Facebook page have been shared tens of thousands of times in just a few days.

People are contacting her from across the country (including the author of this story, who saw the images shared in a Facebook group).

"Wonderful things are happening as a result of all of this.  I contacted the county art association with the idea of having an event where all the kids in the community come out and color in the images with sidewalk art.  They love the idea, and we are going to meet to work out the particulars," Wood said.
Despite her talent, Wood said she's never had professional art training. She worked full-time for the government for more than 30 years until a couple years ago, when she retired and moved from California to North Carolina with her husband. She said she's "finally finding more time to pursue creative projects."

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Wood paints, writes and takes beautiful photographs. And her power washer and driveway aren't the only unusual media she's worked with. She makes darling designs from secondhand corks, tissue boxes and tin cans and restores and repurposes dolls, giving them an entirely new look.

And while most of us may lack her talent, we now have an excuse for letting our driveways get dirty.

"Just tell (people) that you need it to get really dirty in order to create cool art," Wood said.

View a gallery of Dianna Wood's driveway art: