Pennsylvania Farm

Pennsylvania Farm

Oil on canvas, 18x18

sold

I was driving back from the show in State College, PA, this summer, and thinking about my fall painting trip, when I saw a beautiful farm like this one. In a flash, my plans expanded from painting New England autumn to painting New England (and more) autumn and New England (and more) farms.

That way, if a big storm rips the leaves from the trees early, or if autumn comes in September or November, I still will have plenty of subject matter. Farms are farms, beautiful in any kind of weather.

But what is this trip, you say? The Farms and Foliage Painting Trip is a sponsored plein-air journey that I'll be taking - ideally with you! - in October.

Here's how it works. You buy a painting in advance (they start at $125) - and you get to come along on the trip with me. I send you regular blog postings of my journey, with photos of the places I go, the people I meet and of course, a dog of the day. When I start painting - all on site, by the side of the road, painting what I find - I will include a photo of the painting, and the painting in the landscape. And I might send you some other goodies from the road, too!

When I get back, I'll put my paintings up on a web page, and you'll choose your paintings in the order in which you signed up.

For more about the project, and to sign up, visit the Farms and Foliage Trip page on the Jacobson Arts website. You can get there by clicking here!

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Dog of the Day

Well, Dog Person of the Day, really... That's my friend Carol Baney, on the red couch in our living room, covered with Koko, Doc and Lulu. Anyone who visits has to put up with our canine family, and I can tell you, it's a lot. But when they're not barking at Carol, they're delighted to have another lap to climb onto! 

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A Final Thought

"Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it." 

- Pope John Paul II

Kim's Farm

Kim's Farm

Oil on canvas, 40x40

Commission

A long and wonderful project has come to a happy end, and I'd like to share the story with you. 

At the start of the fall, I got an email from a woman I'd met at a show in Omaha. She wanted a painting of the Nebraska farm where she grew up. She wanted a big painting, with heavy texture, of the farm and a cow or two. 

Unlike many artists, I love doing commissions. Ones that are projects, like this one, are especially fun and intriguing to me. Maybe this comes from working in newsrooms for so long and seeing how the energy and ideas expand and improve when others are involved. Kim sent me a bunch of photos of the farm, but for some reason, I couldn't put the photos together in my mind into a cohesive whole. The poor woman explained it to me, walked me around the property virtually, and answered my questions again and again, and still I couldn't see it. 

So I decided to actually go and see it. I knew I could pass relatively near the farm on my Big Skies Painting trip. Kim gave me directions, and on my way back, I stopped in and saw the farm. 

It still was not without its issues! First, I drove right by it and got more than a little lost. I called Kim, and she suggested that I facetime her - and she was able to look through my phone at the landscape around me, and direct me to the right place. 

I walked around, took a bunch of photos, and, when I got home, made a sketch of the farm. Kim had a couple ideas, I had a few more, and I made a small painting. It was at this point that we both realized that I was situating the farmhouse incorrectly. I had my norths and wests mixed up. It took a while of patient Kim's coaxing and explaining before the whole thing fell into place in my head - and then I was able to paint. 

I had some ideas while I was painting, and Kim had some ideas, and we communicated back and forth, and in the end, this is the painting I made - and the painting she loves. 

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2 pancakes

2 eggs

2 bacon

The most incomprehensible sign ever! And it's been up for years. Hahahaha!!! 

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Dog of the Day

Toby (the dog) and Ira (the human). I met them in a hotel somewhere this summer - Indiana, maybe? Ira rescued Toby after the dog escaped from a fire, and was abandoned by his humans. Toby is old now, partly deaf and partly blind, and much loved.

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A Final Thought

"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult." 

- Hippocrates

Seven-Barn Farm

Seven-Barn Farm

Oil on black canvas, 10x10, $125 

Years ago, when I started making the 10x10 paintings, they were what sold first, when I went to shows. At the better shows, I could always count on five or six of them selling - these paintings are original oils, and less expensive then what many artists charge for prints. But starting last year, people stopped buying the 10x10s. Happily for me, they started buying bigger paintings. 

But the not-buying of 10x10s has continued, and has sort of mystified me. Of course, as the paintings stopped selling, I more or less stopped painting them, which has meant that most of my available 10x10s are of the southwest. And not everybody wants paintings of the southwest, especially if they live on the East Coast. 

So I've started a new series of 10x10s, with farms and mountains and salt marshes and who knows what else. I am curious to see if they begin to sell again. I'll let you know. 

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MY FIRST CHANCE to test my theory on the ground, so to speak (as opposed to on the internet) will be July 9-10, in Wickford, RI, at the Wickford Art Festival. This is a fine-art-only show that takes place on the streets of Wickford, a quaint New England seacoast village. I'll be in Booth 82, on Elam Street. Hope to see you there! 

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IF YOU'RE TRAVELING anywhere this summer, be prepared to be delayed by road construction. I went to Cincinnati and Omaha and back, and encountered construction - mostly bridge repair - on every road I traveled. Interstate 80 was the worst, with construction pretty much everywhere. 

I have to say that I got a good look at some of the bridges being worked on, and they were scary. This one, which I believe is in West Virginia, is nowhere near the worst. One bridge being worked on in Ohio was literally crumbling as I drove across it. 

All those news stories about the state of our infrastructure? They're right, and not exaggerating. 

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Dog of the Day

AT THE PARADISE CITY Art Festival, I was part of a surprise involving this painting. Great fun! And here is Boy himself, looking at the painting. I think it's a scream that the dog in the painting is bigger than the dog in real life.  

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A Final Thought

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: 

I am here to live out loud." 

- Emile Zola

Ohio Farm Revisited

Ohio Farm Revisited
Oil on canvas, 12x24, $300

Or click here to send me an email!

My very first painting trip, in 2009, took me to Wisdom, Montana, the second-most beautiful place on Earth (the Eastern Shore earns the top spot). On the way out and back, I stopped in Ohio to paint. 

I was captivated by the land and the light near Sandusky, is in northwestern Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. There was a golden quality to that light, a warmth that seemed somehow contrary to what seemed like a thinness to the air. That shiny, golden light brightened the fields and the wide, flat plains of Ohio. It lighted the barns and the neat, orderly homes. The sunsets burnished and blazed on the fields of hay and wheat and alfalfa, which went on in rows forever.   

The quality of that light - brand-new to me - is  something I've come to know, here on the Eastern Shore. Its thinness comes from clarity and cleanness of the air. Its round, golden brightness comes in part from the extra bounce of light off the water. Here's it's the Atlantic, on one side, and the Chesapeake Bay on the other. There, it was Lake Erie. 

I made and sold a lot of paintings from that trip, but a few are still with me. This is one of them - or it was. Even then, I was experimenting with leaving parts of the canvas blank, and leaving pieces of the painting more or less unfinished, the structure and the drawing visible. 

And while I like that effect (the original painting is the smaller one, just above), I think that this painting is better finished, with the canvas filled up. What do you think? 

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MY BROTHER RECENTLY directed me to the blog written by friends of his, David and Kim Stringer. Click here to reach their Memory Stringer blog, which is filled with wonderful, amazing photos; David has his own blog of humor, which you can reach by clicking here.

I have a terrible memory, and so I like to get blogs delivered to my inbox. If I don't, I forget that they exist. It's awful, I know, but it is what it is. I noticed that, at the time, David and Kim didn't have a "subscribe" box, and so I wrote and suggested they add one. 

In conversations about how to do it, the question of comments came up, and it occurred to me that perhaps not all of you know how to post comments. So here's a tutorial. 

Scroll to the bottom of the blog post, and look for a link saying "X comments." In the photo above, it's "0 comments." To post a comment, click on that link. 

A new screen will open, containing a box in which you can make your comment, and a little doodad thing to prove to Blogger that you're not a robot. You put your comment in the box, obey the I'm-not-a-robot instruction, click "post comment," and there you go. 

If you'd like to read my brother's blog - his name is Rand Cooper, and he writes for Commonweal Magazine - click here, and then search for Rand. His posts cover a wide range of topics, from politics to politeness to movies and more. 

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Dog of the Day

Koko and Abby, the best of friends, are also maniacs and morons. The maniac quality, you can infer tell from the wreckage that surrounds them in our living room, in this photo. 

The moron quality you can infer from the fact that this morning, they ate a lightbulb. Or at least chewed it up. It was not a new-style bulb, thank heavens. And I don't know how much they actually ate, if any at all. I do know they broke it into little pieces and scattered it throughout the house. 

The vet said we should feed them right away, and that they probably would be fine. I have my fingers crossed, and would welcome any good thoughts or prayers any of you can send our way. 

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A Final Thought

"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."

- Paul Cezanne

Tom's Barns - and a Wild Day on the Coast

Tom's Barns

Oil on canvas, 30x30

Please click here to email me for price and availability. 

I've been delighted by the skies I've made lately. I like the colors and combinations I'm discovering, and by the way the sky and the land complete and reflect each other. I like the arrangement of barns in this painting, too. 

If you'd like to see this, and my other new paintings, I'll be at the Paradise City Arts Festival next weekend in Northampton, MA. This is a marvelous show, with fine art and beautiful fine craft - ceramics, furniture, clothing and fabric, glass, clocks and lots of jewelry. It takes place in the Three County Fairgrounds, just off I-91. 

In addition to the artists and artisans, there's good food available for lunch or snacks. You can find out more about the show, get directions, and find a coupon for a discount on the gate fee by clicking here. 

I'll be in Booth 409, in the Morgan Barn (the small barn). Please come by and say hello! 

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 As many of you know, we live in Wachapreague, a tiny town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The Atlantic is just down the street. A salt marsh and barrier islands mitigate the power of the ocean, but the storm this week brought major flooding to the Shore and to Wachapreague. In all these photos, water is covering roads.

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Dog of the Day

Saw this husky at a show in Richmond this spring.  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

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." 

- Henry David Thoreau

A Two-Barn Day

A Two-Barn Day

Plein Air Painting, 12x36

sold

Yesterday was my first real day of freedom since leaving Patch - and I went out and painted and did not take a computer with me, for the first time in 18 months. I felt a little naked - and wondered, for a while, what was going on in the world. But I only wondered for a while.

Today, I had the chance to speak with Connie Mettler, who runs Art Fair Insiders, which offers artists information and feedback on shows around the country, and also hosts discussion groups, blogs, and all sorts of interactive art stuff. It's a fabulous site for anyone interested in doing shows.

Connie also does work consulting for artists, and as a bonus for donating to Art Fair Insiders, I won an hour of her consulting time.

It was a fascinating and instructive hour, though it was not without its scary moments. Connie said that when she looked at the photo of my booth from Northampton (see below), she thought my work looked pretty terrible, and that I might be out of my mind to be doing what I am doing.

My heart sank when I heard these words. I know, of course, it is one person's opinion, but still, ouch. She followed this quickly by telling me that then she looked at my work on the blog and saw that it had merit - but that my booth looked pretty crappy. That was not her word; I am extrapolating.

From there, I got lots of good ideas about ways to improve not only my booth, but also my chances of getting into shows. Drop the dog paintings from the application process (not from the booth, but from the jury process) - and - interestingly - do not go after the smaller sales, but continue to be bold and make big, bright paintings.

So. Two Barns indeed. There's enough for a whole farm here.

p.s., "Two-Barn Day" is a really good painting. If you're in Annapolis June 9 and 10, you can see it in person, at the Annapolis Arts and Crafts Festival!

Autumn Blowing In

Autumn Blowing In
Oil on stretched canvas, 10x20

Call me at 860-442-0246 or email me

if you are interested in buying this painting

This wind, it's what they'd call "a freshening breeze" in another century. It came out of nowhere, and brought rain with it last night. Today, it's tearing leaves from the trees, and brushing autumn along in front of it.

I've always loved a windy day. There's excitement in it, in the rush of air, and scents, and the very chaos of possibility.

A couple months ago, I got a great book on Andrew Wyeth, for $2 at a library book sale. It's probably a $100 book, and weighs enough to make you remember that paper is, in fact, made out of wood.

I spent part of yesterday poring over Wyeth's work, and the marvelous writing by Richard Meryman, and thinking about my painting in light of Wyeth's. One thing Wyeth and I share is a fascination with landscapes that are about nothing, and that contain nothing. He had the skill and vision to play them down from there; it is my tendency to play them up. And that's fine. I don't want to be Wyeth, and never will be, but I love his low-color approaches, his astonishing attention to detail, his quiet and intense brooding. I exult in these landscapes of nothingness, finding life and glee and optimism, where he finds death and sorrow and that luscious range of browns and sepias and colors of the quiet soul.

If I don't want to be Wyeth, well, I'd be happy to be one-tenth as successful.

Revival

Indiana Farm
Oil on stretched canvas, 10x10

Call me at 860-442-0246 or email me

if you are interested in buying this painting

I just put some finishing strokes on this painting from my Arizona trip. I have a few more paintings remaining from that journey. Some of these are pieces that I simply didn't finish on the road; others are paintings I thought I didn't like, once I got home.

This painting was one of those. It really paled in comparison to the big canvases, the bold colors, the heavily painted pieces I did in the sunny plains of the Southwest. But I've realized that it has a small, quiet rural charm that I like.

I finally bought a tent, so that I can do outdoor shows. I have hemmed and hawed about this, and at last, I came to understand that it wasn't the expense of buying the tent that was holding me back. It was the potential of rejection. First, rejection from the shows themselves. Second, rejection from buyers.

One thing about what I am doing is that it puts me out there, day in and day out, with no protection other than my full belief that I'm doing something I was put on this earth to do. Most days, that's plenty. Some days, my soul is absolutely naked.

All of you help to protect me. Thank you.