Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Majesty

Majesty
Oil on canvas, 20x20
Please email me for price and shipping/delivery informatio


It wasn't until I traveled to the west that I understood how small we humans are. 

Here on the East Coast, we have built buildings and cities and skyscrapers. We have planted trees. We have surrounded ourselves with structures that, compared to our own bodies, are enormous. 

And these are what we see. It's with these that we measure ourselves and our East Coast lives.



I remember standing in the sagebrush desert of Idaho, and sensing for the very first time in my life, the enormity of the sky and the earth, the incomprehensible distance between them and the minute speck of it that I took up.

In an instant, my ratios changed. I was not 2/3 the height of one story, which was, at most, 1/100th the height of the entire building - I was 1/millionth the size of what I was seeing, 1/billionth. I was nothing.
But ah, we easterners, we city dwellers, we foolish souls who measure ourselves against our own constructions! How we are deceived.

I love the feeling of being the size of a mote of dust. I love the universe of sky stretching away overhead to some place I can only imagine, and the run of earth beneath my feet connecting me to the other side of the country, the other side of the world. I love feeling that feeling, and reaching for it in my paintings.



For anyone in (or willing to visit) the area of southeastern Conn., I have another show coming up! This one will run for the month of March, at the Lighthouse Gallery on Long Hill Road in Groton. I will post a flyer here in the next day or so - but save March 4th, from 5-7 p.m., for the opening reception. 

There are a whole bunch of really great things about showing at Lighthouse. Chris Rose is the first of them. The lovely space is the second.


But the best, I think, is that commissions from anything the artists sell go to the Lighthouse Voc-Ed program, which owns the gallery and helps kids with developmental difficulties. 

4 comments:

Art with Liz said...

This is beautiful Carrie.

carrie jacobson said...

Thank you, Liz! Hope you are well over there in South Africa. I have an ASAP painting to post, and I always think of you when I make them.

Elissa said...

I love the brushstrokes in the sky and mountains on this painting.

carrie jacobson said...

Thanks, Elissa - this is another of the ones that I painted over. I used a brush on this initially, but it was one of the first ones I did with very heavy paint - so it was more difficult to just paint over, and has an even more interesting surface, with the knife work on top of the heavy brushwork. Fun! Thank you for writing.