If Wishes Were

If Wishes Were

Oil on black canvas, 40x40

Please click here to contact me for price and availability 

This year, this solstice, I am feeling the full, sweet breadth of summer. The days stretch out, thick with heat and humidity, a mist of it in the distance, softening the edges of the future, the edges of the past.

This solstice, I feel the sweet breath of summer, close on my neck, brushing my hair, pushing hot against my arms and feet and broad, working shoulders. I stand out in the daylight, under brilliant sunshine, in this June that feels like July, and the heat pushes into my bones, and draws the sweat and salt from me as it pulls the paintings from my heart and from my soul.

This solstice, this spring, this summer, has been about flowers, the warm deep earth, the grass growing like thoughts in a sleepless night. These days of heat and light have brought a bounty of beauty to me, and I've seen this world in ways I never had, in the slimmer, slighter, paler weeks of winter.

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Dog of the Day

This shy guy didn't mind the art show, but felt safer hiding behind his human.

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A Final Thought

"If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, 

you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, 

no Van Gogh, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong." 

- Jasper Fforde 

Blue Evening

Blue Evening

Oil on canvas, 24x36

sold

Between my recent show in Northampton, MA, and my show in Roanoke, VA, I got sick. Felt it coming on, in my nose first, then my throat, then, as I was driving from Rhode Island to Roanoke, I felt it grabbing hold of me and digging in. Ugh. I got sicker and sicker, the closer I came to Roanoke. It was a long drive - and I think it was a beautiful drive, too, though most of the time, I was concentrating too hard to notice. 

The thing I did notice was the afternoon slipping into evening, the light slipping into shadow, and the brilliance of the day's sunshine slipping into soft shades of blue and purple. I held the image with me through an encounter with a bad hotel and a move to a new one, through a hot set-up in Roanoke, through the show, through my sickness and the heat and the sweat and the happy sales, and when I got home, I painted this. 

I was short on canvases, and painted it over a painting of people skiing. The skiing piece was one I'd always liked, but it had never sold, and so I sacrificed it to "Blue Evening." It makes an even more interesting surface than usual! 

This piece sold so quickly because it went out in an early email to my patrons. That's one of the advantages of my burgeoning patron program - you get to see the pieces before everyone else! There are other rewards, too, in addition to knowing that you're helping me live my dream. To check it out, visit the Patronage Plan page on my website, Jacobson Arts, or click here. 

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Dog of the Day

Here's Daisy, an old girl who visited me at the show in Tubac. A word to you dog owners out there... It's probably too hot to take your dog to an art show this summer. It's a mistake I've made, and I will never forget my dear Gus practically keeling over from the heat at an art show I thought he'd enjoy attending. Here's a poster from National Safety Inc.

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A Final Thought

"Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it." 

- Frank Zappa

Sweet Amarillo

I'm setting out on a month of shows, and part of me is dreading it - the driving, the setting up and taking down, the uncertainty - most of me is looking forward to it.

But the same things that fill me with dread fill me with joy, as crazy as that sounds. I love the driving. I enjoy the physical challenge of setting up and taking down. I thrive on the rush of uncertainty, the thrill of making sales, of seeing people fall in love with my paintings.

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A note here... I wrote this just before a string of shows - and I failed to post it! The shows - Paradise City in Northampton, MA; the Sidewalk Art Show in Roanoke, VA; and the Art and Wine Festival in Annapolis, MD, all were good to me. This painting, and many others, sold during these three shows, and I took a weekend off - didn't go, as scheduled to Indianapolis - and painted.

This weekend, I'll be at the Howard Alan Art and Craft show in Huntersville NC, just outside of Charlotte.

After that, it's Fine Art Festival in Wickford, RI, July 8-9, and the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts in State College, PA, July 13-16, then back here for a week or so, and then back to Connecticut for the Stamford Art Festival, July 29-30. Whew!

Thank you so very much to all of you who came to the shows in Northampton, Roanoke and Annapolis, and a special thank you to the folks who bought paintings from me. All of you - buyers, lookers, friends - make this journey possible. And all of you help make it exciting and engaging.

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Dog of the Day

Lulu, on the right, is at the bottom of the heap in the wide world of dogs here at 18 Bayview in Wachapreague. All she wants is to be Koko's best friend. Koko, on the left, wants nothing to do with her. She snarls and growls, but it never goes farther than that. After Koko lets Lulu know that she needs to stay in her place, they almost inevitably curl up and snuggle. 

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A Final Thought

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, 

those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." 

- Albert Camus