Five years ago, painter Sandy Sokoloff left Boston to live in the more serene and isolated environment of Grand Isle, Vermont. On a whim, he’d earlier visited Lake Champlain, and when the opportunity arose to work on the waterfront, he grabbed it. He was drawn to the area’s natural beauty, as well as its majestic skies and the distant Adirondack Mountains. “I’ve never looked back,” says Sokoloff. “Winter is especially inspiring—isolation and silence.”