Monday, June 4, 2012

Rain Coming, Mansfield Depot

 Rain Coming, Mansfield Depot
Plein air painting, oil on canvas
sold


I was bumping around the Connecticut countryside on Saturday, (visiting the homes of buyers to sign paintings that I'd neglected to sign when I finished them!) when I heard a snatch of a conversation on the radio.

It was a talk by writer Elizabeth Gilbert, about the creative process (you can hear the whole thing by clicking here and then going to her TED talk, at the bottom of the page). She was talking about  Tom Waits, who was driving when whatever you want to name the force that sends creative impulses to us began showing up with a song.

Waits looked for pen and paper or something, anything to help him get the ideas down. Finding nothing, he looked up to the sky and said, basically, "Can you not see that I am driving here? Would you please wait for a little while so that I can capture this thing you're sending me?"

My art has come through a combination of chance, and inspiration and blessing - and my willingness to be open to it. I often feel that I am a faucet of sorts - that the painting is flowing through me, and it is my job to develop the skills to turn that flow into something. And when this is happening, the world simply goes away. I paint, and an hour or two later, I open my eyes - my outer eyes - and there is the world I'm living in, and there is my painting.

Those are the best times, and they are the best paintings. The gift came to me, and I had a paintbrush in my hand and a canvas in front of me.


Mansfield Depot

4 comments:

Chelsea Kelly said...

You do beautiful work! A friend of mine found your blog recently and directed me over here. As an artist myself, I'm just starting the whole process of hoping to sell some works. Hopefully I will get into oils in the future, but we will see! Goodness, I'm babbling, but anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I love the work I am seeing from you so far! All the best wishes of luck in your career!

carrie jacobson said...

Hi, Chelsea! Thank you so much for the note and the kind words! I am so glad that you like my painting.

I like yours, too! Especially that bureau with the tree - it's fabulous. I would think you would have no trouble selling your art. I have lived in places where big trash day yields GREAT stuff - here in CT, not so much, but we are about to move to Virginia, so maybe there...

Oils are great - I love them because they are so forgiving, and because I can pile up the paint, and that is such a draw for me... But it takes forever for the paint to dry, so...

At any rate, it's good to make contact. I like your blog a lot!

Patrice said...

This painting is so very plastic - in the original meaning of the word. Very alive!

I've always liked best those paintings that are truly about manipulation of the entire surface, as opposed to "drawings" that are then colored in.

My creative process? Different all the time - but I like my own work best when it seems to be spontaneous - images that I can see in my mind's eye as I work.

carrie jacobson said...

Thank you, Patrice! Yes, for me, too, the best paintings are the most spontaneous. The longer I think about them, the stiffer and more unhappy they get.