Northern Barred Owl

Northern Barred Owl / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / unframed / $68 including shipping

sold! 

I'VE LED TWO ONLINE painting workshops in the past two weeks, and they've been fun and successful, in that participants seemed to have a good time, and make paintings that they - and I - like. Even people who have never painted, or not painted very much at all, made cool pieces. 

I painted in my regular way, in oils, on a black canvas, and using a palette knife - but participants used all sorts of materials, from watercolors to pastels to acrylics to digital paints. 

There's another workshop scheduled for this Saturday. It will be on my Carrie Jacobson, Artist Facebook page, which you can reach by clicking here - here's the full-blown address, just in case - (https://www.facebook.com/carriejacobsonartist). Go to that page and click Follow. Likewise, go to my personal page and put in a friend request. 

In the next day or so, I'll create an event, which should also make it easier to find the workshop. 

It will take place on Saturday, April 4 at 1 p.m. Eastern. The workshop is free, there is no need to register or sign up. Just set up with whatever you want to paint, and whatever you want to paint on, turn on your computer, find the workshop, and give it a go. The workshop will last about an hour. See you online! 

***

April Flowers

Friday, April 3, through Sunday, April 5, on my Jacobson Arts website (http://jacobson-arts.com), I'll be hosting an online Flower Show and Sale. Fun! Paintings will range from $38 to $5800, and most will include shipping (or delivery). 

The sale will come online Friday morning around 7 a.m., on a special page on the website. You'll email me from a link beside each painting to make your purchase, and it's first come, first served. 

The paintings are fun, and bright, and cheerful, and full of springtime's hope and promise. I hope you'll find something you like! 

***

For Today

"I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven." 

- Emily Dickinson

Laughing Gull

Laughing Gull / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

I GREW UP WITH GULLS, but as far as I can remember, I never heard a laughing gull until we moved to Wachapreague. Even here, they don't laugh all year - though I think they are here for most of the year. 

Their name describes them pretty completely. Imagine a Wicked Witch of the West laugh, but in a gull's high-pitched voice, and you'll have it. It's a sound I love - and a sound that makes me laugh - and one that also can be annoying, if you're trying to do something, and failing at it. There are the gulls, laughing their heads off at you. 

They were some of Peter's favorite seabirds, and we always listened for their return, much as we listened for the start of the peepers in the earliest spring days, and the hum of the cicadas as summer reached and waned. 

***

For Today

“My choice of color is dictated by tact and decorum stretched by an unholy desire to be outrageous. I’m trying to get color to the danger point where it’s too sweet or too noisy without actually making it too sweet or too noisy.”  

- Wolf Kahn

Bluebird on Redbud

Bluebird on Redbud / oil on black canvas / 8x10 / $98 including shipping

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HERE IN WACHAPREAGUE, the bluebirds are back. I've only seen two, and those were mere glimpses, but there's nothing else that is quite that particular blue.

My backyard feeders are full of seeds and full of hungry birds. No social distancing here! I am glad to see them back, eating their full, chattering, lighting the yard with color. No bluebirds have come to the feeder yet, but I remain hopeful and watchful.

***

For Today

The Dipper

Once I saw

in a quick-falling, white-veined stream,

among the leafed islands of the wet rocks,

a small bird, and knew it

from the pages of a book; it was

the dipper, and dipping he was,

as well as, sometimes, on a rock-peak, starting up

the clear, strong pipe of his voice; at this,

there being no words to transcribe, I had to

bend forward, as it were,

into his frame of mind, catching

everything I could in the tone,

cadence, sweetness, and briskneww

of his affirmative report.

Though not by words, it was

a more than satisfactory way to the

bridge of understanding. This happened

in Colorado

more than a half century ago - 

more certainly, than half my lifetime ago -

and, just as certainly, he has been sleeping for decades

in the leaves beside the stream,

his crumble of white bones, his curl of flesh

comfortable even so. 

And I still hear him - 

and whenever I open the ponderous book of riddles

he sits with his black feet hooked to the page,

his eyes cheerful, still burning with water-love - 

and thus the world is full of leaves and feathers

and comfor, and instruction. I do not even remember

your name, great river, 

but since that hour I have lived

simply,

in the joy of the body as full and clear

as falling water; the pleasures of the mind

like a dark bird dipping in and out, tasting and singing. 

- Mary Oliver

Egret

Egret / Oil on black wood / about 2x5 / 

unframed with sawtooth hanger / $38 including shipping

sold

SPRING HAS HIT ME with a wave of sadness, and like so many of these waves, it was one I hadn't expected or prepared for. 

Peter loved the springtime. It was his favorite, and he reveled in it. Always, when I was in Arizona in February, he would send me photos of the daffodils blooming on the sheltered, sunny side of the house, and tell me to have heart, that spring was coming. I knew how much he looked forward to it. 

As March turned into April, he would walk around the yard, drive around town, or to Quinby Bridge, or to the store, and he would notice everything, and report it all to me. Buds on the lilac bush, a spring bird at the feeder, the Burnhams' weeping cherry blossoming in graceful splendor, the forsythia everywhere about to burst - he loved it all, and loved living in a place where spring arrived so early. 

His love of spring and his constant descriptions of it instilled a similar awareness in me, and as the chilly days climb into warmth, I find myself noticing the most minute changes, and missing him in each one. 

***

Thought for the Day

The Middle

When I remember bygone days

I think how evening follows morn;

So many I loved were not yet dead

So many I love were not yet born. 

- Ogden Nash

OK, I will quit with the Ogden Nash poems now, but I hope you've enjoyed them. He was one of my mother's favorite poets, and while purists will no doubt look upon these as doggerel, I have to say I love them, as I love any poem that makes me smile or makes me think. 

Tufted Titmouse (Tee Hee)

Tufted Titmouse / Oil on black canvas / 5x5 / $68 including shipping

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LAST NIGHT, DURING of my many awakenings, I let the dogs out and in, and made my way back to bed. 

By the time I got there, Lulu had shoved herself between the bedspread and the blanket. I like to keep the dogs on top of the bedspread, but it was about 2 AM, and I just didn't have it in me to fight her, so I slid in between the sheets. 

And Lulu snuggled up. She pushed her hard little dogsbody up against me, and through the sheet and the blanket, I could feel her warmth and her joy, and I fell back to sleep easily. 

This morning, I was thinking about it all, and realized that Lulu has a special gift, and it is that she is a great snuggler. 

I went through the dogs, then, thinking of their special gifts - Doc's is loyalty, Koko's is love, Woody's is persistence. Then I turned to people - who are more complicated, and so, I think, it is harder to isolate their special gifts. Peter's was patience, I think. Mine, like Koko's, is love, I believe. 

What about you? What is your special gift? 

***

A Growing Flock

A lovely woman who collects my paintings has, like many of you, been very enthusiastic about the bird paintings. Here is her bird wall early in the process (above), and then later. 

Isn't it wonderful? 

***

Thought for Today

The Dog

The truth I do not stretch or shove

When I state the dog is full of love

I've also found, by actual test

A wet dog is the lovingest. 

- Ogden Nash

Kingfisher

Kingfisher / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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WHEN PETER WAS ALIVE, he would make pizza usually about once a week. 

When I say "make," I mean that he would take frozen gluten-free pizza, usually Udi's, and doctor it up, adding a variety of items, depending on what we had in the icebox and what he felt like making. 

Usually, it was regular pizza-type pizza, with pepperoni or soupi or sausage added, but often it was more exotic. Pesto and garlic and artichokes. Cheeseburger pizza. Taco pizza. Bacon and ham pizza. 

It was always delicious and always wonderful, but the thing about it was that it always took him FOREVER, absolutely forever, to make these pizzas - often upwards of 90 minutes from start to finish. 

Honestly, I never knew what took him so long, and now, will never know. Few people outside of me were ever treated to these pizzas, but on the rare occasions when he invited people in, they and I would wait in the living room, not very patiently, rolling our eyes and laughing at him while great pizza smells drifted in from the kitchen. 

I bought a frozen pizza last week, and last night, doctored it up and cooked it. The whole process took about 20 minutes, 18 of which were the pizza cooking in the oven. It smelled good, and looked good, but it tasted like cardboard. Tasted like loss and sadness, nothing fun, nothing delicious. I had one slice and threw the rest of it away. 

I have another one in the freezer, and I thought of throwing it away, too, and maybe I will - but maybe I will keep it and try it again in six months or so, and see if I can conjure up the memory of my sweet, deliberate, careful husband and our delightful and delicious and inexplicably slow pizza nights. I'll let you know. 

***

Thought for Today

Fleas

Adam had'em. 

- Ogden Nash

Tern

Tern / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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RAIN PELTS THE AWNING over the kitchen window, as I sit at the kitchen table on this dark, windy morning. I am pretty sure the sun will come up, but in these mornings when night lingers - and lingers longer because of the storm - I sometimes, with a hitch in my throat, wonder: Will today be the day the sun does not come up? 

Of course not, I reassure myself - but I will keep glancing out, until I get the answer. 

***

For Today

The Germ

A mighty creature is the germ,

Though smaller than the pachyderm.

His customary dwelling place 

is deep within the human race. 

His childish pride he often pleases

by giving people strange diseases.

Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?

You probably contain a germ. 

- Ogden Nash

Green-Headed Tanager

Green-headed Tanager / oil on black canvas / 4x4 / $48 including shipping

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THOUGHT I'D POST a bright little bird to start the week. This is a bird I've never seen - it lives in southeastern Brazil, in eastern Paraguay and northern Argentina - places I think I will never visit in my lifetime. 

I used to think I'd see all the world. Now, I know I won't. And I have to admit that that is OK. There are plenty of adventures to be had here - and in places just a bit away from here. And there is plenty of time to have those adventures. 

In my life, with Peter and alone, I've had lots of adventures. I've seen places, we lived places, we traveled together and apart - and in this art life, this post-Peter life, I will continue to stretch and travel and chase the world. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sometime in the not too distant future. 

And that knowledge makes it easier to get through these very close-to-home weeks. 

***

Thought for the Day

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work." 

- Emile Zola

Crowing - and Hatch, NM

Crowing /  Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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CROWS ARE SMART. When we moved in, here in Wachapreague, there was some sort of antenna tower sitting on a square of concrete in the back yard. 

One morning while I was out in the studio painting, I heard a persistent sort of cracking noise, and looked up to see a crow sitting on top of the tower, tossing pecans down through the center, so they would hit the concrete and crack. Then the crow could open them relatively easily. 

An article in a science journal in 2014 found that your average crow is about as smart as a 7-year-old child. The scientists gave six wild crows a series of tasks involving water displacement. The crows had to figure out how to get bits of floating food, by dropping heavy objects into a tube filled with water. The heavy things would displace enough water to bring the floating food up high enough that the crows could reach it. 

Seven-year-old child? I am not sure that this 63-year-old so-called adult would have figured out that I could get the food by dropping something heavy into the water. Sheesh. But sometimes I think the car is smarter than I am. 

***

Hatch, NM / Oil on black canvas / 16x20 / $435 including shipping

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PLEASE REMEMBER my landscape-painting workshop, Saturday at 1 p.m., on Facebook. It's free, it will be easy and I think it will be fun! Set up with your computer, something to paint on and something to paint with. We will be painting a landscape a little like the one above.

***

Thought for the Day

"She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. 

And birds fluttered around her, writing 'yes' in the sky." 

- Monique Duval

This Must Be Love

This Must Be Love / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

sold! 

OF COURSE, IT'S NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE to ignore the economic calamity that this virus is forcing on so many Americans, including myself and so many of my friends and family members. 

But there are some positive aspects to the situation. Without all the airplanes, the air is clearer. Probably the temperature of the planet will drop noticeably - it did after 9/11, and it wouldn't surprise me if it did now.

I find that, for me, at least, it is OK to be not rushing all over the place all the time. Meetings I go to, gatherings I attend, they're just not happening.

I'm not shopping anywhere near as much as I usually do, and neither is anyone else. But when I am in the grocery stores, I find that people are talking to each other, and laughing, and living together in this shared new moment.

On the streets of my little town, the same thing is happening. It seems everyone is walking, and neighbors are stopping neighbors, just to chat, to discuss the virus - or NOT the virus - and to take a moment to slow down and really ask about life.

I know that this is a tiny Pollyanna-ish point of light in the middle of a terrible siege, but it is something to consider.

***

Thought for the Day

"You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things." 

- Mary Oliver

Mama Cardinal

Mama Cardinal / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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MANY OF THE SHOWS I'd counted on for income this summer have been canceled. 

Unlike many of my artist friends, I already had a little bit of an alternative plan, just trying to get myself back on my feet after Peter's death. With the uncertainties of this new chapter of my life, with the sudden responsibility of single-person dog-care, I'd only applied to a few shows, and have been  building my commission base, painting to keep my galleries happy and building my skill and reach through projects large and small. 

Still, it's a blow that Art and Music on the Farm and Arts in the Park in Richmond, two of the major shows of my summer, have been canceled. 

In an effort to make up income, I'll be cooking up some online art festivals/sales, hosting some online workshops, and, when the virus has come and gone, doing some real-life workshops, farmers markets and the like. 

My next online sale will be my spring flower show, which will take place in a few weeks. My first online workshop - free! - will take place on Saturday at 1 pm on Facebook. I'll do a FB live presentation, and I hope you'll join me. We will make a nice landscape painting - so set up with your computer and your paints and brushes or knives or pastels or whatever you use, and paint with me! 

If you've been thinking that you'd like to own a Carrie Jacobson original - or add to your collection! - I have some wonderful new ones, large and small, on my website, jacobson-arts.com (http://jacobson-arts.com). And if you've been wanting a commission, now is an ideal time to talk to me about one. 

And of course, the Bird A Day project has taken wing once more! 

***

Thought for the Day

"Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them 

they somehow fly out past you. 

And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure." 

- Stephen King

Little Kingfisher

Little Kingfisher / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

THIS VERY QUIET early-pandemic life, uninterrupted by people, by visitors, by society, this is the kind of life that Peter often lived, I realized this morning. 

When I was home, of course, there was the noise and the clutter and the colors and the TV and the music and the gabbing and squawking and tweeting that is me. There were the people I invited over and the events I dragged him to, but even then, even with me here, most of the time, he was in his quiet office, making art or tying flies or reading - without turning on the television or playing tunes or talking to anyone on the phone. 

And when I wasn't here, this was how it was. Like this day, today. Quiet. He was alone, but not lonely. He was not pressed for time or conversation. He filled the days with thinking and creating and being with the dogs. 

This morning, in the quiet of this small house, where I have been alone for days and days, I realized how much Peter loved his quiet, solitary hours, and how glad I am that he was able to have them. 

***

Thought for the Day

The Kingfisher

loud whistles at night

a kingfisher on the prowl -

river fish are still

- Tania Kitchin

Bluebird with Blossoms

Bluebird with Blossoms / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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VIRUS VIRUS VIRUS.

 Here's something Not Virus - a little painting of a little bluebird, enjoying a little bit of spring on a little branch. 

It might not seem like it NOW, but you will be enjoying a little bit of spring soon. Promise. 

***

Thought for the Day

"Art has many avenues; love is carried through many vessels. Your oceans are your colors, 

your ship is your brush and your treasures are in your heart." 

- Moncy Barbour

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