Crow Flying

 Crow Flying / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68, including shipping! 

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THE ONE GOOD THING that I can say about the covid is that it made Halloween easier for me. 

It was Peter's favorite holiday, by a mile. He died last year on Oct. 10, so close to Halloween that I didn't even consider participating. Without the covid, I'd have had to think about it this year, and I am still not ready for that. 

Every year, we decorated for Halloween. With the help of our daughter, who often gave Peter Halloween decorations for Christmas, we amassed a pretty interesting collection, including a toaster with a skeleton hand that pops up when someone walks by; a suitcase with a glowing skull inside that lights up when people come near; and a variety of skeletons, including skeleton humans walking skeleton dogs; and a family of skeleton mice, one of which spent an entire year on a branch of a dogwood in the front yard. 

Peter himself dressed up on Halloween, and took great pleasure in scaring the kids, though he made sure to be gentle and sweet with the wee ones. He also bought all the candy, inevitably three times as much as we could ever give away. He ate it until Easter, most years, loving every calorie. 

I was often away on painting trips in October, and Peter would spend the month taping and watching all the scary movies he could find. I'd come home in time for Halloween to find the DVR filled with horror movies. 

I don't know if I will ever truly enjoy Halloween again. I hope I will. I know I'll never enjoy it in the same way, but that goes for so very much now. I am thankful that, because of the covid, I didn't have to decide anything. And I am thankful that I have the memories of so many Halloweens with someone who loved it so very much. 

***

Coda

"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it." 

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Crow in a Tree

 

Crow in a Tree /oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68, including shipping

this crow has flown! 

I'VE HAD TROUBLE READING since Peter died. Well, even before "trouble reading," I've had trouble picking up, starting or staying with normal-sized books. 

After Peter died, I gave away his mammoth World War II tomes, his collection of books about the Vikings, his huge library of giant books on poker. Sometimes I teased him that he bought books by weight - the bigger and heavier they were, the more he wanted them. 

He died and I couldn't even open books. Eventually, I began to be able to open slim volumes. A friend lent me her Winnie-the-Pooh books and they started me reading again. 

Poetry pulled at me, and I could handle poems, and books of poetry, in much the same way that I could handle bird paintings. These things were small and manageable. I could see the end from the beginning, and that felt important. That felt like a lifeline.

This weekend, I borrowed a small book - "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart " by Gordon Livingston. Its subtitle is "Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now." Yes, pop psychology/philosophy, I know. It is small, and fascinating. 

Here is a thought I encountered that got me thinking this morning, and which I wanted to share: "The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to." 

And I guess that encapsulates my "A Last Thought," too. 

***

Dog of the Day

Last week, Doc decided that I was sad and needed a toy. 

Crow with Red Legs

Crow with Red Legs / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 includes shipping

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DO YOU ALL KNOW about tomatoes and mint? They taste amazing together! 

For my birthday last year, Peter made me an herb garden. He planted lavender, mint, lemon thyme, cilantro and sage, in pots just outside the back door. 

I also have a big pot of rosemary, years old, a couple pots of chives and a small pot of wilty basil. 

I had a half-dozen tomatoes from my friend Anne's garden, so I set about making a tomato salad, and went out to the herb garden and picked basil, rosemary, lemon thyme and, what the heck, mint. 

So here is the salad: Slice your tomatoes, and put them in a layer on a platter or a plastic container, for those of us who are utilitarian about such things. Feel free to add cucumbers, if you have them. Sprinkle that first layer with a touch of sugar, plenty of salt and pepper, and a bit of olive oil and balsamic. 

Then put down your herbs. Then add another layer of tomatoes, and again the sugar, salt, pepper, oil and balsamic, and up and up, herbs and tomatoes or cukes or both, until you run out of room or tomatoes or both. Let it sit for a few hours, if you can. It gets more and more delicious. 

And the best part was that this afternoon, I put a whole layer of mint in - and good heavens, it's amazing! Maybe everyone knows about this, but I've never had those two tastes together - and I wish I had. I will have this every day that I can, as long as the tomatoes keep coming. Summer on a plate.

***
For Today

"It's your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you."

- Rumi

Red-Winged Crow

Red-Winged Crow / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

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WELL, I HAD A LAUGH that started yesterday and continued well into today. Thought I would share it, since I do share all my woes and tribulations, and it's good that you all know that my life is not an endless series of gray and depressing days.

Since The Great Confinement began, I've been giving a series of free painting workshops on Saturdays, (at 1 p.m. Eastern, on my Carrie Jacobson, Artist Facebook page). 

Usually, 20-25 people tune in. Many paint, some just watch, and some watch during the live workshop and paint afterwards, watching the videos (they are archived on my Carrie Jacobson Workshop Videos Facebook page). 

Regular participants include the Wachapreague postmaster, Alena, and her mother, Darlene. They both make art, Alena generally with pastels, and Darlene, with a variety of media. Alena is a good and enthusiastic painter; Darlene is very talented, very experienced, and back to painting after a long absence. You can see her work on her Facebook page, Paper Moon Studio. 

They joined in this past Saturday, as we painted a wading egret. When I was about 10 minutes into the painting, Darlene posted that she wanted to buy it. That totally cracked me up - not only was I not finished with the painting - but I was barely started! 

I laughed and said, sure, and that maybe I should just end the painting and the workshop right there, and call it a day. It really made me laugh. I've had people buy paintings before they were finished, but never when they were just barely started. Honestly, I thought she was kidding. 

But this afternoon, I got a text from Alena, wanting to know when she and Darlene could come and get the painting! Hahahaha!! She actually DID want it, and she KNEW it, right then and there, before it was even one-third done. Still has me laughing and shaking my head. 

What a lovely world this can be. 

***

For Today

"Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark." 

-Rabindranath Tagore

Ruffled

Ruffled / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 - free shipping! 

sold!

THE VIRTUAL SIDEWALK SALE of the virtual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts starts Thursday, and I am participating. Most of the paintings on my website, Jacobson Arts, are on sale, and shipping or delivery is free. (I am hoping that someone from Alaska doesn't buy my 48x60 inch floral painting!). 

The small paintings aren't on sale - except to you, my loyal blog readers, and also to my patrons. And you blog readers can get an extra discount on the larger paintings if you like - just let me know, in the email you send to buy the painting (you will understand this when you do it) that you're a loyal reader of this blog, and I'll email you the discounted price, and you can decide whether you want to buy the painting at that price. 

As always, installment plans are available. If you want the painting, I will find a way to get it to you.

***
For Today

I RECEIVE A REGULAR, free newsletter called The Painter's Keys. It often has wonderful stories, ideas, prompts. This one delighted me, and I will keep it to send out to all the people who tell me all the reasons they can't get around to painting. Here's the link: https://painterskeys.com/sixteen-reasons-wont-paint-today/

Crow

Crow / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 unframed / $68 including shipping

sold!  

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I made a painting for Erika and Paul, in celebration of the five-year anniversary of their wedding. In it, I made a breakthrough - I think. 

It's something I've been edging up to for years - using colors not for their colors, exactly, but for their light and dark values - at least in part. 

So I'm not reaching for blue because it's "blue," necessarily, but because it's a dark, cool shade that recedes from your eyes, and speaks of "shadows" and "underneath" and "farther away." 

Reds and yellows and oranges - the hot colors - speak to me of sunlight and brilliance, the tops of things, the bright bits. Whether they are really, truly red or orange or yellow or pink ceases to matter (mostly). They are the shining parts of the painting. 

In a way, I think, in that painting for Erika and Paul, and in many of my paintings, more or less, over the years, I am choosing colors for the jobs they do, rather than the colors they are. 

Though I've been painting this way for a while, I believe, this is the first glimmer of understanding I've had about it. I still don't totally get it - and, in fact, I might be wrong. But now that I have this idea, I'm experimenting with it, as in the crow above. 

So let me know what you think. I am sure I'm not the first person who's used color like this. If you like it or hate it, I'm interested to hear. If you know others who paint like this, or who painted like this, please tell me. 

Meantime, here's the painting I made for Erika and Paul: 

***
For Today

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,

wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns.

How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,

fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard

and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots. 

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous

domes and there is no need to memorize a succession

of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.

No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's

little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home

than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.

Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?

Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera

eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a cafe ignorant of the word for ice,

I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress

known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning

paper, all language barriers down,

rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way. 

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone 

willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.

I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal

what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.

It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself

and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off

down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna. 

- Billy Collins

Crow Looking Back

Crow Looking Back / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 unframed / $68 - free shipping

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TO ALL WHO MIGHT BE WONDERING, "Three Geese" has found its home. And, interestingly, it was bought by the person whom I thought of when I thought of that painting. So I believe it has gone to its rightful owner! 

***

Bucket List

I HAD ABSOLUTELY no idea that I coveted a black eye. All these years, all these decades, and I just didn't know, until I got one. 

It happened unromantically enough. I'd been watering the front garden, and my shoes were wet. I slipped on the threshold and fell full-length onto the living room floor. 

After several tries, I was able to get a call through to Liesl and Lexie, and they came back (we had just finished walking), cleaned the blood off of me and the floor and bandaged me up, pretty much good as new. 

I talked to my dad, who asked if I had lost consciousness (no), or if I had a headache (no), and he said I should be fine. No concussion. He used to be a brain surgeon, so he knows. He's the one who told me I'd have a black eye. 

Sure enough, I do! I'm quite excited and proud. And I've made up a good story - Vincent Van Gogh and I were arguing about my ear. He was insisting that I cut it off, and I said No Way - I like my earrings too much to lose one ear! OK, he said, then it's a black eye for you. 

***

For Today

The Crow's Calling

A bird moved as if

a black hole shaped

like a crow was strutting

a path across bright playground

grass before rising, leisurely,

at an angle, to observe

from the perch

of a stark eucalyptus

to caw forth a sermon,

determined, inspired as a priest

on a foreign mission

irnoring the fact of our

language difference. 

- Peg Quinn

Crow Landing

Crow Landing / oil on black canvas / 5x7 unframed / $68 includes shipping

sold! 

DURING THIS TIME of isolation and quiet, I've been painting a lot. 

For years, I've painted pretty much every day - but before this, my painting days were often broken up. Shopping, cooking, cleaning. Visits with friends, lunches out, meetings, trips to the Y, and to Virginia Beach, and heaven knows what else. I'd paint four or five hours a day. Now, many days, it's nearly twice that. 

I say "I paint," but of course, it's not all painting. I inventory and order materials and supplies. I blacken and wire canvases. I look for subjects to paint. But if I am in the studio for nine or 10 hours a day - and often, these days, I am - I'm painting for eight or nine of those hours. And I feel like I'm making progress, that all this time is amounting to something. Taking me somewhere. 

Looking for a blank notebook yesterday, I ran across a ledger from 2009. For the first few months of the year, I'd listed all the paintings I'd made, and there were 23 or 24 each month. They were mostly small - and cheap! 

I am cheered to see that I'm continuing that sort of pace. This year, I have photographs of more than 50 bird paintings I've made so far, and I haven't counted the other pieces I've finished. 

By the time I started out in this painting life, I had 25 years of newspaper experience. Twenty-five years of daily deadlines. When I floundered at Being an Artist, at the beginning of this journey, I sought success in what I knew, and set deadlines. I required myself to make at least one painting a day. 

Over the years, this sort of productivity has helped me develop my voice. It's helped me build the muscles I rely on to push all the crap aside right now and forge ahead. It helps me try new things when I am pretty sure I have the strength to do the lifting. And it helps me know when that is. 

A new painting I finished last week, the start of a series of people talking while they are walking their dogs, is one that I've been thinking of for a few years. At the time, I knew I didn't have the chops for these paintings. Last week, I thought, I do. And so I set out to make this painting - and I love the way it came out.

So if you are a painter, an artist, a writer,  musician, whatever - if you are seeking a creative outlet and want to sharpen your abilities - the best thing you can do, I think, is to produce. Good, bad, middling, whatever - the point is to make the art, write the sentence, compose the music, and go from there. Look at what's good about the piece - what you like about it - and what you'd change. And then, in the next one, which will happen today or this afternoon or tomorrow, change that thing. And then do it again. And again. And again. 

And again. 

***

Gratitude

In this time of loss and now of isolation, I work hard to be grateful. I thought I'd share a gratitude with you all each day, at least for a while. 

If you'd like to share things that you're grateful for, you can use the comments below, or email me... I'd love to hear what you're grateful for. So here is today's: 

Though Peter is gone, I am grateful, so very grateful that I found him, 

and that I had him as my husband since 1988.

***

For Today

"There is no word for art. We say it is to transfer something from the real to the unreal. I am an owl, and I am a happy owl. I like to make people happy and everything happy. I am the light of happiness and I am a dancing owl." 

- Kenojuak Ashevak

Crowing - and Hatch, NM

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

sold!

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

sold

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

Peter's Birthday Crow

Peter's Birthday Crow / Oil on canvas / unframed / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

TODAY, PETER WOULD HAVE TURNED 73. We would not have had much of a celebration, because he never liked parties. But I would have bought and wrapped presents for him, and set them out on the coffee table, probably with a vase of flowers from the grocery store, our favorite (and only) florist.

I'd have been up since 5, and he'd have gotten up at 8:30 or so. I'd have waited a couple hours for him to be awake enough, and then I'd have made a fresh pot of coffee, and he and the dogs and I would gather in the living room, and he'd have opened his presents, a little embarrassed - yes, even after all these years - at being excited by the whole process. 

Then he'd have gone off and done whatever he did during the days, and I'd have done the same, then I'd have cooked him whatever dinner he wanted, and probably made some gluten-free brownies to stand in as his cake (he always wanted me to be able to share in the food celebrations). And then, tomorrow or the next day, I'd have left for Arizona, and watched him waving goodbye as I drove off. 

It's been 105 days since he died, and today, I celebrate his life, his living, his beautiful spirit and huge heart. How he loved me! And how he loved our daughter, and her family, and our dogs, and our life together. I celebrate his art, his humor, his writing, his constant reading and learning. I celebrate that he lived the life he wanted to live, and chose to share it with me. 

Today, to celebrate Peter, I hope you will celebrate your own love. Husband, wife, child, parent, dog, fish, whatever. Honor him, or her, or them, and the life you have, the path you're walking,  smooth or rough, flat or steep. Rejoice, just for today, just for a moment, that you are walking it together. 

***

For Today

"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song." 

- Chinese proverb