February Bouquet

 February Bouquet / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68, including shipping
Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you'd like to buy this painting! 

SOON, THERE WILL BE FLOWERS. There will be gardens, and sunshine, hummingbirds and the smell of lawns being mowed. 

Already, here on the Eastern Shore, sunrise is before 7 and sunset after 5:30. Already, I have smelled the scent of spring - unmistakeable, indescribable - on the morning breeze. Already, I've heard the songs of springtime birds. 

Garden catalogs have arrived. Daffodil greenery has poked through the soil on the protected east side of the house. The tips of the trees and bushes along the roadways are starting to redden. My mind has turned to thoughts of mulch. 

We will make it. Spring will come, bringing warm days and new flowers, lush lawns, dogwoods shimmering in deep woods, laughing gulls calling on the breeze, the marsh grasses changing to that thin yellow green, tender with the season, with new life, with rebirth. With survival. 

***

Coda

(love is more thicker than forget)

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

- e.e. cummings

You Know You Will

You Know You Will

Oil on black canvas, 30x30

Please click here to email me for price and availability

It's hard to tell, from this photograph, how bright and full of life and sunshine this painting is. This one is another of those big steps for me, a leap that brings all that I've been doing into a new light, a new place. There's a new feeling in this one, and it is something about freedom, and bliss and the simple cheerfulness of a sunny hillside on a summer afternoon.

I've worked and worked on this photograph, hoping to make it reflect the painting more truly, but this is the best I can do. In the piece, bright green dominates, and the orangey pinks of the spiky flowers hum and resonate over the green, above the blue and purple, all under a clear, sunny sky.

Unless it sells beforehand, I'll have this piece at my next show, which is CenterFest, in Durham, NC, Sept. 16-17. Click here for more info!  And if you'd like to see this piece before I leave for Durham, please drop me a line, and come visit me in Wachapreague.

***

Here's a Pair that Beats a Full House

Hahahaha, it's my brother Rand (right) and his childhood-into-adulthood friend Jon, on a recent trip to Cape Cod. 

I can explain the T-shirts - the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts chose one of my paintings for their T-shirt design this year, and I gave a couple to Rand. 

I can't explain the shorts. 

***

Dog of the Day

This is the dog of a friend I met on Facebook, and then later met in real life, near the Suwannee River, east of Jacksonville, Florida. It was such fun to meet her in real life! 

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A Final Thought

"I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art."

- Carrie Fisher

Feels Like Home

Feels Like Home

Oil on black canvas, 16x16 

Please click here to email me for price and availability

I get mental blocks about the names of things - and sometimes of people, too.  I seem to have a particularly slippery spot in my brain for the names of shade plants. I just had to look up "hydrangea," which is what these are, in the painting above.

I can describe them completely, in terms of color, scent, the feel of the blossoms and leaves - but I can't seem to hold their name in my head.

The same holds true for astilbes and hostas. I love all these plants, love to see them, love to grow them, love to paint them - but I just can't remember them.

Maybe part of painting for me is to strengthen my visual memory, in places where my brain memory just doesn't make it?

***

Wickford Art Festival

Unless the hydrangea painting sells beforehand, I will have it with me at the Wickford Art Festival this weekend, July 8-9. I'm Booth 82, on Elam Street at the junction with Spinx. It's such a fun show, in a beautiful little town. For information, check out WickfordArt.org.

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Dog of the Day

Cute! 

Want your pet to be the Dog of the Day?

 Send a jpg to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com 

(ps, your pet doesn't have to be a dog...) 

***

A Final Thought

"Color is my daylong obsession, joy and torment." 

- Claude Monet

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.

***

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 

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.

***

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.

***

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

Patty's Song

Patty's Song

Oil on canvas, 20x20

Please click here to contact me for price and availability

It's been raining here, raining and raining and raining, and while all that rain brings its issues - smelly, muddy dogs; a halt to the flower-planting; two leaks in the roof - it also creates a marvelous, quiet, focused atmosphere in which to paint. My studio (left) is the former boat garage, in the back yard, over near the west neighbors. On warm days, I leave the front and back doors open, and open all the windows. This is great for letting in the breeze, the sun and the light, but it also lets in the dogs and all their barking. Running in one door and out the other is a great game for them, too, and while I don't mind, it is distracting. But in the rain, my dog friends aren't interested in playing in the yard. Even when they are, no one is out to be barked at.

I've enjoyed the focused time to paint, and hope you like the pieces I've created. This one is from a gorgeous photograph taken by my talented friend Patty. 

*** 

Stuff I've Seen

Hahahaha! Saw this turkey-painted rock on the road to Arivaca, Arizona. I love that someone saw this, thought about it and then went back and painted it. 

***

Dog of the Day

Saw this loony Australian shepherd at the Richmond show. A cousin of Doc and Lulu! 

***

A Final Thought

"All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, 

general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art." 

- Roman Payne

April Dogwood

April Dogwood

Oil on canvas, 15x60

Please click here to email me for price and availability

Often, I already have the idea by the time I choose the canvas, but sometimes, the shape of the canvas leads me to the idea for the painting. 

That was the case with "April Dogwood." I've had this canvas for a while, and have been saving it for something special.                                                                                           Recently, I moved it from the shed where I store many of my blank canvases to the studio, where I paint. I sold a nice cowscape at a recent show, and thought that perhaps a good longhorn would suggest itself.                                                                                           I was taking a break, gazing out the door of the studio when I noticed branches of our pink azalea reaching out past the corner of the house. I knew instantly that that was what I needed to paint on this 15x60-inch canvas. 

It's an unusual painting for me. It is delicate, and subtle, though I will say that, up close, it has lots of colors and lots of texture. I love the rhythm of the branches, the three-dimensionality of the dogwood flowers, the feeling of spring it gives me. 

***

Thank you! 

FOR EVERYONE WHO participated in my April sale, everyone who took a look, thought about buying a painting, sent their friends to the sale, or bought a painting, thank you! It was a grand success. Seven paintings from the sale sold, and one buyer bought another painting from the website. I found plenty of ways to improve the process, and have some great ideas for the next sale. If you have ideas, please feel free to email them to me - carrieBjacobson@gmail.com. 

***

Dog of the Day

(See above! It's Koko!)

***

A Final Thought

"The painter has the universe in his mind and hands." 

- Leonardo DaVinci

Blue Garden

Blue Garden

Oil on canvas, 16x16

One of my nieces is on a school trip to Italy, and is scheduled to fly back on Easter. The plane leaves from Rome. 

My sister is worried that in the current geopolitical climate, a plane with American schoolchildren, flying on Easter from Rome to the US, would be a great target for terrorism. 

While part of me agrees with her, most of me knows that I don't control much of anything in this world, including but not limited to countries with nuclear weapons, world leaders, terrorists and hate. And so, I could worry - and worry has crossed my mind - but I choose instead to pray, and then to let it all go. 

A few years ago, in a church that was connected (and I mean literally) to a garage where you could bring your car to be fixed, I was saved. It was an acknowledgement of my faith, a promise to listen, to be the best servant of God that I can be, and a prod to remember that I am not the pre-eminent being in my life, or in anyone's life. 

While I can't control governments or airplanes or the minds of humans, I can let the light of God, and of all that is good in the world, shine through me, in my life and most particularly, in my painting. I can't do anything to change the larger state of the world - but I can trust, and I can listen, and I can make my art. 

I hope you all find yourselves at peace, today and every day. 

***

Sale! 

AS MOST OF YOU KNOW, I experiment a lot with my painting, and my guess is that I always will. It's how I learn. But it leaves me, at times, with paintings that just don't go with the rest of my current display. So I am putting a number of these pieces up for sale, at deep, deep discounts from my regular prices. 

The sale starts Wednesday at 9 a.m. There will be PayPal buttons on the page at that point, and you can use your PayPal accounts, or pay via credit card through PayPal. If you want to use a check, please email me after 9 a.m. First come, first served! 

The page will be up until about 9 p.m. on Tuesday, and then will be back, with the PayPal buttons at 9 a.m. Wednesday. 

Here's a link to the page: http://www.jacobson-arts.com/april-sale

***

Dog of the Day

 In our house, we call this "Being Lulued."

 

***

A Final Thought

"Here's to freedom,

cheers to art.

Here's to having an excellent adventure

And may the stopping never start." 

- Jason Mraz

Uncloudy Day

Uncloudy Day

Oil on deep black canvas, 36x36

Please click here to email me for price and availability

The smell of new-mown grass blew sharp and sweet on the wind yesterday, and this morning, the dark scent of the marsh spreads softly in the crisp dawn air. Dandelions brighten our lawn, and around town, forsythia seems to explode in bursts of brilliance, while pink and white trees trail petals like lace on their limbs and on the ground below. 

People are working on their boats, cleaning and shining and polishing, and we've heard that flounder are already running. Piles of sticks and leaves and brush and pinecones stand on lawns, and at the edges of the roads, and JD and John will pick them up, maybe this week, or maybe next, depending on when they have the time, and room in the ancient town truck. 

Bluebirds are building a nest at Pat's house, and the laughing gulls are here already, cackling away. Our azaleas are budding scarlet. I am hopeful that my lilac bush might bloom this year for the first time. 

I'm loving painting flowers, and coming alive as spring comes to the Eastern Shore. 

***

Stuff I've Seen

It's a little hard to make this out, but it is a giant sculpture of a road runner, in Las Cruces, NM. It must be 40 or 50 feet long! This was as close as I could get. 

If you see a cool, or strange, or heart-warming sight, and would like to share it with readers of The Accidental Artist, please send a jpg to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com! 

***

Dog of the Day

It's Batty, who lives with Blanco and Shadow, and 

my friend SaraBeth, in Tucson. She's a sweetie! 

***

A Final Thought

"Art is to console those who are broken by life." 

- Vincent Van Gogh

Daisies

Daisies

Oil on canvas, 10x20

sold

Well, the show in Florida was terrible for me, just terrible. I sold one small painting and three pillows, and that was it. The people at the show liked my paintings - but didn't want to part with their money. So I think the bottom line is that Florida just doesn't like me. And that's OK. I will put it on the list with a couple other states I believe I should avoid. 

After the show in the Not-So-Full-of-Sunshine State (it was cold and rainy for most of the show), I headed for Arizona - and am still heading there. For some reason, this trip has seemed loooong. I mean, it IS long - but this time, it's felt long. But I'm in El Paso, getting the oil changed in my van, so I'm almost done with the longest part of the drive - Texas. 

I had to wonder, as I was driving through West Texas, why it is that I love the open nothingness of Montana and Wyoming, while the open nothingness of Texas makes me just long to be gone. 

If you're in southern Arizona next week - and who wouldn't want to be??? - please come to the show in Tubac! It runs from Wednesday through Sunday. I'll let you all know my booth number when I have it, but I'm hoping I'll be in my regular space, on Plaza Road near Bunnuel Street. 

***

Stuff  You've Seen

This fun sign is from my friend Laurel, visiting New Mexico. Good sign! If you have a photo of something fun or funny or poignant or just something that needs to be shared, please send it to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com. Thanks! 

***

Dog of the Day

Best thing about the Florida show? The dogs! Here's one of my total favorites, Jack, who was with a couple artists in the show. Isn't he adorable?  

***

A Final Thought

"There is no great honor than supporting someone's growth 

and evolution as a human being."

- Ellie Burrows

Keeping the Light - and the Big Skies Trip

Keeping the Light 

Oil and gold leaf on black canvas, 30x30

Please click here to contact me for price and availability

I'm off in a bit for Minneapolis, and then Mystic, CT, and I'm excited about going to a new place, seeing new stuff, exploring an area of the country that's new to me. 

Packing for this trip put me in the frame of mind of packing for my western trip, in the fall. I can hardly wait to get on the road and head for the mountains. I'm thinking the days will be crisp, even chilly, and the nights cold. Perfect travel and painting weather! 

I'll be exploring and adventuring in Montana and Wyoming, and maybe South Dakota, too. This is a sponsored painting trip, meaning that people will buy paintings before I leave. I'll write a special, sponsor-only blog, stuffed with photos and stories of places I go and people (and dogs) I meet. I'll post my paintings and photos of my paintings in the landscape. When I get back, I'll post all the paintings on a webpage, and sponsors will choose their paintings in the order in which they signed up. 

I've done this several times before, and the trips have been fun. Sponsors tell me they've enjoyed the missives from the road, and that they love the paintings, too. Click below to read about my past trips, and click here to find out how to get involved in the Big Sky Painting Trip. Sponsorships are $125 for a 10x10 painting, $300 for a painting 16x16 or 18x18; $500 for a 20x20 or 24x24. 

• To Tubac and Back!
• California Calling Painting Extravaganza
• The Origins Painting Trip

Jubilee / sold

***

Dog of the Day

Here's little Kaja, dog about town, visiting the post office with one of her humans. Kaja gets the best walks of any dog in town. Sometimes her humans are on foot; sometimes they ride a three-wheeled bike, and drink their morning coffee as they go. 

Kaja trots along, head high, tail up, happy and confident, totally ignoring the ridiculous amount of frantic barking and yowling emanating from 18 Bayview Avenue.

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

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A Final Thought

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." 

- Pablo Picasso

Dances with the Daffodils

Dances with the Daffodils

Oil on black canvas, 16x16

Please click here to contact me about price and availability

Yesterday I mentioned that I was a little behind in my posting. Well, this is how far behind. Daffodils! Sheesh! Seems an eternity ago that they were blooming, here on the Eastern Shore. 

These daffs show up every year at Eyre Hall, an estate that's nearly at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, just about an hour south of here. I drove all the way down there, only to find out that I'd left all my white paint at home. Arrgghh. 

But there I was, and so I decided to make the painting anyways. I had some beige that could do for highlights, and I just would have to mix my colors without using white. A challenge! 

The painting is brighter than it would have been with white. The sky is more solid. The daffodils are a bit more monotone than they might be. But the painting has punch, and I think it captures that moment in spring when the earth is just starting to come alive. 

***

Saw this sign in State College, PA, home of Penn State and, probably, a fair number of high pedestrians. 

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Dog of the Day 

This cat lives with a nice woman whose house is around the corner from us 

here in Wachapreague. The cat believes she owns the road - and the lawn, 

and the next-door lawn, and the one next to that, too! 

***

A Final Thought 

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. 

And the artist is the only person who is never serious." 

- Oscar Wilde

Flowers and Route 13 Farm

I felt I had to give you all a break, and so in addition to "Flowers for Jojo III" (left, 12x36), I'm posting "Route 13 Farm," above oil on canvas, 20x20. Please click here to email me for price and availability. 

I am on my way back from grief over the death of my dear dog Jojo, but it is not a steady climb

I will say that these broken-color paintings I've been doing seem to be helping me mend. Helping me cope.

This is how painting came to me, as a way of recovery, when I was 50. I was struggling to cope with my mother's death, and I was failing. Painting came into my life unbidden and unexpected, and it lifted me, helped me get my head above the grief. It helped again, months later, when my boss died, and again, four months after that, when the job I'd thought I would have forever was eliminated.

It is not a surprise that painting is rescuing me again.

***

I'M HEADING OUT this week to High Point, NC, where I will participate in the Piedmont Plein Air Paintout, Sept. 17-20. This is a fun event. Twenty-five artists will paint on site from Thursday through Saturday around the pretty town of High Point, then sell the paintings, still wet, on Sunday.

On the way, I will put new paintings in J. Gallery in High Point, and with JWV Artists in Charlotte, NC.

The next weekend, I'm in Dayton, Ohio, at Oktoberfest, an art and, yes, beer festival at the Dayton Art Institute. 

***

Dog of the Day

Smokey had been with us for about a year when we brought Jojo home, and they became friends instantly. Smokey is part chow, part shar-pei (we think), and Jojo taught him to play, entreating and inviting him again and again and again and again, until he finally got it. 

For the past 10 years, Smokey has slept nights in the doorway to our bedroom. I believed he was guarding us. But since Jojo died, he has moved out of that doorway and set himself down within eyesight of the back door. 

I think that all these years, he was protecting Jojo, not us. And now, I think, he keeps waiting for her to come back. 

***

A Final Thought

"It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to. The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures." 

- Vincent Van Gogh

Tangled Up in Blue

Tangled Up in Blue

Oil on canvas, 30x30

Please click here to email me for price and shipping info

I love this painting. The colors, the patterns, the background. It sings of spring to me, and summer, and those long afternoons stretching out toward a warm, pink sunset. 

After I'd decided on the name, I heard that Joni Mitchell had been hospitalized.  It made me think of all the folk singers I loved when I was a teenager. In a way, I think I'm doing what they were doing. 

In just a few minutes, I'll be leaving for the Spring Jubilee Show in Pendleton, SC. I had an OK show there last year - not great, but not bad - and I truly enjoyed myself. I met really nice people, the show was organized beautifully, and it was a lovely, small show. Fun! So it's a pretty good way to start April. 

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I visited our daughter Erika (above left, with her wedding dress) and her fiance Paul this weekend. I met our new great-grandson Emmett and saw his mom Samantha (above right). I saw our older great-grandson JJ (above right, with Samantha) and his dad John, our grandson Ashton, my brother and his wife and their daughter Larkin, and I also saw my sister. Whew. And it snowed the whole time, practically!

I also delivered paintings to Center Framing and Art, 56 LaSalle Road, West Hartford Center. Lori and Forrest, below, put all my new stuff in the window. Doesn't it look great? 

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Dog of the Day

It's Anne Pinkerton's dog Trixie! Trixie has a pal who will be featured as DOD soon. If you'd like your pet to be the Dog of the Day, please send a jpg to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

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A final thought

"A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm." 

- Charles Schwab