Along the Southern Wall - and Heather and Joe's Maine Art

Along the Southern Wall

oil on canvas, 18x36

sold

Williamsburg is a surprisingly hopping place! It is not all history and button shoes and old-fashioned dresses, which is the picture I'd more or less had in my mind. 

When I arrived Friday night, I found a huge party going on in Merchants Square, the site of An Occasion for the Arts, the festival I'm in over this weekend. It was the birthday party of the square, and restaurants and bars had set up outside. They were selling food and drink quite briskly. People were dining in the square, and at bistros surrounding it. There was a band playing, and people were dancing!

Saturday morning, a farmer's market was setting up while we were setting up. It was jammed, absolutely jammed. Our festival was jammed, too - and one patron told me that just last weekend, she and her husband had participated in a gallery crawl. Twenty-five bucks bought them a tasting-menu dinner from the area's restaurants, and a view of art in galleries, stores, banks and offices. Coming up are a pottery exhibit, a corn maze, lots of art events, a half-marathon, free cooking classes and more. Who knew? Certainly not me. 

It was amusing to see people dressed to work in Colonial Williamsburg come through the show. People who live in town told me they never quite get used to seeing those folks dressed up and shopping in WalMart. 

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MY NEXT SHOW is Paradise City, on Columbus Day weekend, Oct. 11-13, at the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton, MA. Click here for info, and to print tickets that will give you a discount on admission.  

Paradise City is a fun show, and I always enjoy being there. There will be lots of great art and crafts, tons of stuff to ooh and aah over... and good food, too! 

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MY FRIENDS HEATHER Macleod and Joe Keller are selling their art in a flea market store in Bridgton, Maine. I think their stuff is fun and creative and inventive - and I just love the grisly Halloween items.  

Bacon and egg chair

Blender Lamp

Halloween treat

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Dog of the Day

These two poodles, Charlie and Max, are therapy dogs, visiting people in hospitals and nursing homes regularly. They were great dogs, on the alert the entire time they sat on the bench. 

The Morning Hours - and Sponsors Are Signing Up

The Morning Hours

Oil on canvas, 24x48

sold

I never used to like paintings of flowers, but then I started making the sunflower paintings and my attitude changed. After a few years of sunflowers, I started some delphiniums and then hollyhocks - and now, I have to say that I love painting flowers. 

I don't know that these are as transporting as landscapes, or as personal as pets - but they are pretty and uncomplicated and filled with sun and the promises of summer. And on a good day, that's enough to make me happy. 

The poem from which I took the title is at the end of this blog post... 

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People are signing up to sponsor me on my California Calling trip - and I hope that you will, too! There are four price levels this trip, starting at $50 and going up to $750. Everyone at every level gets access to the special Tubac and Back newsletters. Everyone gets a chance to win a painting, up to 36x60 inches. Everyone gets a calendar of paintings from the trip, and some other goodies, and everyone in the top three levels gets art! 

And everyone, everyone gets my undying gratitude. 

Buy a sponsorship for yourself, or to give as a present, or go in with some friends on one of the multi-art levels... or shoot me your ideas and I'll see if I can make them work! 

For more, click here to go to the jacobson-arts sponsorship page. 

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Dogs of the Day

Sam the Samoyed and Zoe, lhasa apso, are both very old. They're also both pretty blind, and now, are going deaf. And they are very sweet. I'll tell you, though, when one is trying to go up the back steps, and one is trying to go down, it's chaos. 

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Here's the poem, by Alfred Austin, from which I took the title of this painting. 

A Country Nosegay

Where have you been through the long sweet hours
That follow the fragrant feet of June?
By the dells and the dingles gathering flowers,
Ere the dew of the dawn be sipped by noon.

And sooth each wilding that buds and blows
You seem to have found and clustered here,
Round the rustic sprays of the child-like rose
That smiles in one's face till it stirs a tear.

The clambering vetch, and the meadow-sweet tall,
That nodded good-day as you sauntered past,
And the poppy flaunting atop of the wall,
Which, proud as glory, will fade as fast.

The campion bladders the children burst,
The bramble that clutches and won't take nay,
And the pensive delicate foxgloves nursed
In woods that curtain from glare of day.

The prosperous elder that always smells
Of homely joys and the cares that bless,
And the woodbine's waxen and honeyed cells,
A hive of the sweetest idleness.

And this wayside nosegay is all for me,
For me, the poet-the word sounds strong;-
Well, for him at least, whatever he be,
Who has loitered his morning away in song.

And though sweetest poems that ever were writ,
With the posy that up to my gaze you lift,
Seem void of music and poor of wit,
Yet I guess your meaning, and take your gift.

For 'tis true among fields and woods I sing,
Aloof from cities, and my poor strains
Were born, like the simple flowers you bring,
In English meadows and English lanes.

If e'er in my verse lurks tender thought,
'Tis borrowed from cushat or blackbird's throat;
If sweetness any, 'tis culled or caught
From boughs that blossom and clouds that float.

No rare exotics nor forced are these;
They budded in darkness and throve in storm;
They drank their colour from rain and breeze,
And from sun and season they took their form.

They peeped through the drift of the winter snows;
They waxed and waned with the waning moon;
Their music they stole from the deep-hushed rose,
And all the year round to them is June.

So let us exchange, nor ask who gains,
What each has saved from the morning hours:
Take, such as they are, my wilding strains,
And I will accept your wilding flowers. 

Alfred Austin

Joy for Weary Hours

Joy for Weary Hours

Oil on canvas, 12x24

Please contact me for price and delivery/shipping information! 

Though we didn't have a garden this year - a first in recent memory - the joys of the summer garden haven't passed me by.

I've savored strawberries still warm from the sun, and sweet, thin-skinned cucumbers from my friend Pat's garden.

I've served up squash and asparagus from Dulcie's garden, so fresh you could nearly taste the breeze in them.

I've breathed the rich spice of roses, the heavy weight of gardenias, the soft powdery scent of camellias. I've smiled at the swaths of black-eyed susans that seem to be everywhere this year, and marveled at the showy frills of irises and lilies.

I've missed having my own gardens. But there's always next year.

The title of this painting - my own little substitute garden - is the final stanza of a verrryyy long poem,  "The Poor Man's Garden,"  by Mary Howitt:

Yes, in the poor man’s garden grow

  Far more than herbs and flowers—

Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,

  And joy for weary hours.

Coming soon to a painting near you! 

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This Weekend! 

Mystic Outdoor Art Festival! 

Corner of Willow and Main, across from the post office, on the Seaport side of Mystic. 

See you there? 

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Dog of the Day

This is a pretty funny photo to start with, but it's even funnier when you know the story. 

Zack, who is a GREAT dog, lives with my friends Cynthia and Kevin and their other wonderful dog George (click here and here for more photos). 

Zack has degenerative myopathy. His hind legs pretty much don't work. He can walk, a gliding, sort of slouching walk on flat ground, but needs help with steps and uneven territory. He is not in pain, and he is a very happy dog, but he has serious trouble getting around. 

Still, STILL, he managed to make it into his favorite hiding/shame place, the bathtub, when he, uh, let loose on the floor. Poor, dear Zack... 

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Extra! Extra! 

Click here to see a ridiculous and hysterically funny video!  Do it! You will laugh yourself silly!