Autumn's Best of Cheer - and Pull Right in to the Drink-N-Drive

Autumn's Best of Cheer

Oil on canvas, 10x10

I know that autumn is inevitable, but every year, it excites me. And now that I paint, it excites me even more. But it's more than the colors in the fields and in the trees. It's the pleasure of kicking through fallen, drying leaves; the thrilling snap of a frosty morning on my cheeks and in my nose; the way the stars gleam sharp and brilliant in these clear and chilly nights. 

But painting the fall is the best, and this scene is sort of the quintessential autumn painting for me. It's a study for a larger painting I am doing as a commission. And for anyone living in the mid-Hudson Valley, yes, it does look familiar. It's on Route 17A, on the left as you're heading into Florida. 

I took the title of the painting from a poem by Helen Hunt Jackson. You can click here to read the entire poem; the stanza I lifted the title from is right here: 

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer's best of weather,

And autumn's best of cheer.

This painting and another new painting are up for auction at Daily Paintworks. The opening bid on each is $90.

You can see my gallery and place bids by clicking here: http://www.dailypaintworks.com/Artists/carrie-jacobson-4216 - or by clicking on the Daily Paintworks icon on the right-hand side of the blog here!

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HERE'S A GREAT knife-holder dreamed up by my friend Heather MacLeod. Isn't it fun? Check out more of her stuff at her website, heathermacleod-art.com

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HEATHER ALSO SENT this photo, which absolutely made me howl. When we went to Canada together on a painting trip (see my blog entries from June 2010), we saw a series of mailboxes mounted on lawnmowers. After a while, we realized that they were probably the mailboxes of people who lived in the area in the summer, and were tired of putting their mailboxes back up after they'd been knocked over by the winter plows. And the other day, Heather saw a similar mailbox arrangement somewhere in Maine!

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YES. IT'S A liquor store IN a gas station. Peter calls it the Drink 'n' Drive.

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Dog of the Day 

I don't know his hame, but he was hanging around Willis Wharf the other afternoon, and he was soaking wet, and he was having about as good a time as a dog can have.