Small Fall - and the Art Stroll

Small Fall

Oil on black canvas, 6x6

sold

On the second Friday of very month, the town of Onancock (that's the Big City, when you live in Wachapreague) has an Art Walk. All the galleries in town are open late, artist studios are open late, and many shops are open late, too.

This month, Jack Richardson, a talented and well-known painter who owns the Jack Richardson Gallery, is featuring my art. Yay!

If you're in the area, I hope you will stop in and see the gallery, meet Jack and check out my new paintings in real life. The Walk runs from 5-8 p.m.

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I happened to be behind a Peter Pan bus a while ago, 

and had to wonder - Just what is Mr. Pan doing? 

Love to hear your thoughts! 

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Dog of the Day

It's Koko, waiting at the studio door. She's still not a great studio dog, but 

she's beginning to get the idea. She and Abby like it best 

when I have both doors open, and they can include the studio 

on their racing laps through the yard. 

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A Final Thought

"An artist cannot fail. It is a success to be one."

- Charles Horton Cooley

Autumn in Tennessee - and a Change in the Palette

Autumn in Tennessee

Oil on canvas, 10x10, $100

Please email me if you'd like to buy this painting! 

I'm in the middle of collecting an inventory of all the paintings I made in 2014. I'm up to June, and I'm in the 75-80 range. I have a whole bunch in a folder on my desktop that I haven't posted, and it's time to get busy with that! 

So here is one from November in Tennessee. The air was clear and yellow, and though the morning had been chilly, the afternoon bloomed with sudden warmth and brilliant color. I got off the highway and painted this, and then managed to get dreadfully lost. But I made it home. 

The paint on the yellow tree in the center is very thick, very bright. The tree shimmers in my painting just as it did on the side of the road there. I like this one. 

Sometimes I think I like autumn best of all. 

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THERE'S REALLY NOTHING nothing I'd rather do than paint, and with each painting, I think I learn something. I try to try something new with each one, even if it's something small - and then I pay attention to see how that thing changes the painting, my outlook, the outcome. 

I listened to an online talk yesterday, and one idea that came up was that to save time, you should arrange your palette so that the colors you use most are closest to you. It might be only a fraction of a second that you save, but those fractions add up. So I did. It was a bit alarming to have a different arrangement of colors - but it made me think about them all anew. Interesting. 

And yes, I have thought about using fewer colors. Every once in a while, I do. But I love having all these colors! Love it! 

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Dog of the Day

Here's Patch, the kitty who lives with the wonderful woman 

who cuts my hair. Patch is a riot! A smart, funny cat, 

Patch amuses me every time I visit.  

Want your pet to be the dog of the day? 

Send a jpg to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

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.