A Day of Mias!

Mia with Pearls

Commission

I am lucky enough to have a string of good, fun commissions right now, of animals I'm sure I'd like in person, and people I know I do like in person. So it's a great combination. But that doesn't mean that it's not without its difficulties. 

In the Mia with Pearls painting, I got the dog right away. The pearls were a different story. My first pearls - wish I'd taken a photo - were large blobs of white paint, looking more or less like some sort of disease. 

Scrape.

My second pearls were little round outlined things, looking somewhat like Wilma Flintstone's pearls.

Scrape. 

I got smart, then, and powered up the internet, and looked around until I found a video of someone painting pearls. I practiced on a string, and then went back to work on Mia, and - voila! - pearls! 

Mia the cat was another issue all together. My first attempt didn't capture the length of her hair or the expression on her face. 

Mia 1

Scrape. 

My second attempt was closer, but still didn't get there.

Mia 2

Scrape. 

Maybe a minimalist approach would work, I thought. So.. Mia No. 3

Mia Minimal

That was all on Sunday. On Monday, I did Mia with pearls in the morning, and then, voila, Mia Without Pearls. 

Guess I just needed to work through everything that wasn't Mia, until I found the real cat inside. 

    

 Mia without Pearls

Commission

***

It's hard to tell what this is, but it's a HUGE ship crossing over one of the tunnels 

in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Cool, huh? 

***

Dog of the Day

Don't know who this dog is, but he was happily wandering around in his yard 

near Assawoman (yup!!!), over near Chincoteague. He came up to greet me as 

I cruised around, looking for something good to paint. 

Want your pet to be the Dog of the Day? Send a jpg to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Rio!

Rio

Oil on canvas, 12x12

commission

Years ago, a lifetime ago, I had the chance to become the editor of The Carroll County Times in Westminster, MD. I'd wanted to be the editor since I'd started in newspaper 10 years earlier, and I'd worked hard to make it happen.

So I left a great job - copy desk chief of The Virginian-Pilot, in Norfolk, VA - and took the leap.

It quickly became dispiritingly clear that running a newsroom was just not for me. It was a terrible fit with my personality. And the publisher of the Carroll County Times made being the editor there an even worse fit.

But I loved my editors and my staff, and one of the people at the top of that list was Toni Guagenti, a vivacious, energetic reporter who strove to do her best, every story, every time. She was smart and kind and funny. She loved dogs. And she extended a hand of friendship to me during what was a very, very tough stretch of life.

In time, Toni and I both left Carroll County. After a brief stay at the Washington Times, she was hired by The Virginian-Pilot, where she worked until relatively recently, when a round of layoffs eliminated her position.

She freelances in Hampton Roads now, and we have been in touch since I moved to Wachapreague last year. And when a dear friend of hers, Corinne, lost her beloved cat this summer, Toni got the two of us together.

On Saturday, Toni and Corinne came to Wachapreague to collect the painting of Rio, and to take me out. We had a great time, talking and laughing, catching up, getting to know each other - and having a delicious lunch at The Island House, to boot!

Today, the morning dawned crisp and clear, with a cool autumn wind blowing in from the north.

Winter is coming, with its gray days and early sunsets. But as I write this, I'm cooking homefries with lots of onions, the sun is out and the day is full of promise. Peter is in the other room, tying flies and planning his day's fishing. I'm listening to the dogs bark and feeling lucky to have a family I love, friends new and old, and people in my life who enrich me spiritually, challenge me intellectually and help me live my dreams.

***

ONE OF THOSE people is Lori Chozik, who owns Center Framing & Art in West Hartford Center, CT. My brother introduced me to Lori, and she was the first gallery owner to want to represent me. On Friday, she hung a whole bunch of my paintings in the window.

I think it looks great! If you're in or near West Hartford Center, take a stroll by, and poke your nose in the gallery and say hello.

***

AS FOR THE houses or coffee cups question, opinions are just about evenly split, with some folks offering different ideas (dogs, trees)... and most people saying just do something that will amuse me. So I am still trying things. And still open to ideas!

***

Dog of the Day

This dog and her people were dining on the deck at the Island House on Saturday. 

Himalayan

Himalayan

Oil on canvas, 12x12. Contact Lori at Center Framing & Art, 860-233-7804, for price and delivery information.

I got some great news yesterday! The Hartford Courant is going to feature one of my paintings on the front cover of iTowns, the paper's weekly entertainment magazine. This is very exciting. It's a nice magazine, and it's appealing and engaging, and so I would guess it's pretty well read. Yay!

I was feeling down about my painting early in the year. Not about the painting itself, though that felt slow, too - but I was down about the business part of this. Nothing was selling, on line or in galleries. Commissions had dried up. I had applied to UConn, to the master of fine arts program, and they'd rejected me. I'd already had a year in which I was turned down for just about every juried show I entered.

Now, I'm on some big upswing. My paintings have started selling again. Commission work is trickling in. I've gotten into shows, and fairs, and now I'm getting some free publicity.

Today, too, I got a note from Susan Miiller, a wonderful painter from New York state, saying she is interested in curating an Art for Shelter Animals Project show or shows. So that's exciting, too!

Meantime, I had the laptop in the kitchen yesterday, and I looked up, and here's what I saw:

Yup, that's our deck. And that's a big mama turkey, standing on the railing.

She stood there for a couple minutes, looking left, looking right, peering all around, then nonchalantly walked down the railing and hopped off at the bottom of the steps.

Killer

Killer

Oil on canvas, 12x12. Contact Contact Lori at Center Framing and Art (860-233-7804) for price and delivery options.

For me, advancement glides in on the wings of failure. I don't take steps forward by thinking and then doing, but by doing and then thinking. 

And I believe I've always been that way. That's one of the reasons I find computers so wonderful - they let me try out sentences and word orders, and let me change them again and again, without having to erase or use whiteout or go through sheet after sheet after sheet of paper. 

Painting is much the same for me. I make a line or a blob or a shape, I try a color or a stroke or a gesture, and if it doesn't work, I scrape it off or move it around and try it again. Sometimes I have a whole series of things that don't work, ideas or colors or even whole paintings - and I welcome these. I embrace them! To me, they mean that improvement, change, discovery are coming. 

While I'm writing all this beneath this painting, I don't mean to imply that it is a failure. In fact, I like it a lot - though not as much as I liked Sherry Svec's painting of the same cat (her cat), which she did in a pet-painting workshop of mine. 


If any of you are around West Hartford, Conn., on Saturday, stop by Center Framing & Art, 56 LaSalle Road, and say hi. I will be painting on the sidewalk there from about 10 to about 2, and I'd love to see you. 


And take a look at the gallery during the month of April. The window will be full of paintings of cats - by me! 


Thank you for reading. 

Tiger Cat

Tiger Cat

Oil on canvas, 12x12. Contact Lori at Center Framing and Art (860-233-7804) for price and delivery options

George Carlin once said that when a cat looks at you, it's like he's testing a new set of eyes. This cat really looked like that in the photo I was working from - and I think that "new eyes" thing comes through in this painting, which I really love.

It's been an interesting and exhilarating week or so for me. My silence on the blog and in emails has happened because my old computer finally died. It was a seven-year-old Mac laptop, much loved, much abused, and very very used. It traveled the country with me twice, took me from one career into another, one place to another, one life to another. When it finally kicked, it was slow and creaky and covered with paint, and I felt quite a kinship to it.

So now I have a new laptop, and it is fast and clean and shiny - but probably not for long.

In the interim, I found that six or seven of my paintings at the Wallkill River School Gallery in Montgomery, N.Y., have sold, including two of the giant cow paintings! This news so stunned and amazed me that I was unable to sleep for one night, and barely able to have a conversation about it all with the curator.

I have to tell you all, though, that since that initial discussion, I have received an email through someone else at the gallery asking first if I would finish the bottoms of the paintings (sure) and second, frighteningly, asking this gallery person what the gallery's refund policy is.

I am not going to panic here. The gallery told me the paintings had sold, and I believe they have sold, and am just going to continue to believe that!

I never thought anyone would buy giant paintings of cows in the first place, but I was wrong. Every cow painting I've made has sold; well, one still hasn't, I think, but the rest have. So what does that say about us? I guess people like cows. I know I do.

Think good thoughts for me, and help me will these sales to fruition.

Eunice

Hunter

Oil on canvas, 24x48, $250

This is the second time I've made this painting. The first time, I'd only just started painting. I had this photograph of Eunice, moments before she leaped from the tree to murder a mouse or a vole or some other innocent creature, and it's really a cool photo. Eunice is entirely focused on her prey, and is gripping the tree with claws, muscles and her giant feet, but you can tell that she's not thinking about the tree, or her position or anything other than the moment of pouncing.

I'd priced the original painting at what I thought was a prohibitive sum. Thought I could show it without worrying that it would sell - and if it did, it would sell at a high enough price that I'd be happy to trade the painting for the money.

I am. I think.

There was something about that first painting that this painting doesn't have. But to be honest, there's a lot about this painting that that first one didn't have. It was fun - and challenging - to repaint it, especially to reinterpret it, but still capture that feeling of hunting.

Puffy

Puffy

Oil on canvas, 24x36, $250

Puffy doesn't hold anything back.

When she's mad, she's mad, and she hauls off and pops whatever dog or cat happens to be nearby. 

When she likes you - which she does in rollicking, exuberant stretches, which last for weeks or months and then end, abruptly - she climbs on you, purring and rubbing and touching you with her paw. Then she forgets that you exist.

Puffy was born in the closet of the bathroom of our house in Maine. Her mother, Samantha, is a semi-wild adoptee who escaped before we could get her spayed. Puffy's dad is a scruffy Maine tomcat who lived for years on the streets and in the barns of Bolster's Mills.

Frank, our late chow, thought Puffy was about the most wonderful thing ever, and it was mutual. At first, we were convinced that Frank was going to eat Puffy, but instead, he nurtured her, snuggled with her, wagged his little chow tail with vigor and in the end, pretty much raised her.

So this is Puffy, looking mad about something.

Waiting

Waiting

Oil on canvas, 36x42
Call me at 860-442-0246 or email me

if you are interested in buying this painting

Niobe was a good cat. No, she was a great cat.

I was about to start college at Northeastern University in Boston, and I was living in a city for the first time, and living alone for the first time. I was lonely and I was scared, and I went to the local animal shelter to get a cat, but came away with a dog.

Her name was October, and she was a beautiful cross of a German shepherd and maybe an Australian shepherd. That first day, we walked around the city for the whole day. Eight or nine hours, we walked, and at the end of it, she wanted to walk more. We walked the entire day the next day, and still, I hadn't dented her energy level.

What had started as a well-founded doubt now became a clear and unavoidable problem: I would not be able to take my day-school courses, and my night-school courses (I was going to cooking school at night), and have this dog.

So in tears, I brought her back to the shelter.

I left, and walked home. I made it as far as the lawn of the Museum of Fine Arts, which was next to my apartment building, and I sat down and I wept. I wept for October, I wept for myself, I wept for all the dogs in shelters, and all the dogs abandoned and unloved, and then I heard someone say my name.

It was one of my neighbors in the apartment building. He wanted to know where the dog was. I told him my story, crying the whole time.

"You brought her back to the shelter?" he asked.

"Yes," I wailed, feeling like the worst person on the face of the earth.

"Angell Memorial?" he asked.

I nodded.

"I'm going to get her," he said. "Right now. I'm moving to the country tomorrow, to a farm, with, like, 20 acres. I love that dog. I'm going to go get her."

And off he went.

The next day, he and October moved, and I went back to the shelter. There was another wrinkle in this story, for another time, but in the end, I came home with Niobe, a pure white cat, who was probably a year old.

She was an amazing cat, and a funny one, too. Her fur was so thick, and her body so round, she always looked a little like a stuffed cat. Throughout her life, she spent good amounts of time staring at nothing. Staring into corners, staring into space, just watching the air. Also, she was a klutz. She misjudged distances,  and would fall off things she was clearly hoping to jump onto.

She was a food hound, and for years, I fought with her over my food. If I had muffins, she would find them and eat them, including jumping up onto the refrigerator, one day, and tearing open a bag and eating nearly an entire corn muffin.

I'd end up using cereal boxes to make walls around my breakfast, because I couldn't keep her off the table or away from my bowl. When I moved in with Peter, he set out to keep Niobe on the floor. He'd find her on the dining room table, and she'd stick her head under a newspaper or magazine, figuring that if she couldn't see him, he couldn't see her.

If I went away for any length of time, I'd leave Niobe with Mom. Always, when I retrieved her, she'd be mad, and sit with her back to me for days.

But she slept on top of the covers, between my knees, nearly every night for all those years. She greeted me at the dog, dog-like, every day. She put up with other cats, other dogs, boyfriends and eventually a husband, though the first time she met Peter, she bit him.

I had her for 21 years, longer than half my life. She died while we were living in Maryland, and I buried her beneath a forsythia bush on a sunny hillside in our backyard. 

This painting is from a picture of Niobe, staring off into nothingness at my mother's house.