On Deep Creek Road

THE SHOW IN TUBAC, while not a loser of a show, wasn't great in terms of sales. I met some truly lovely people, visitors and artists alike, and made some marvelous connections, some of which will last for life, I think - and patrons and supporters of my work bought some paintings.                                                                                                                           It was excellent on a human level, and was not a disaster financially, but it was a long, slow, and very cold show. Standing outside in 40-degree weather, with a cold wind blowing, for 10 hours or so, to bring in $35, well, that's a tough day.                                                                                                                    Inevitably, a day like this, a show like this makes me question my direction, my production, my choices, even my talent. I talk positively to myself, I remind myself that I believe truly in what I'm doing, and that my job is to talk to people, listen to them, share my story if they're interested, hand out cards, invite them to sign up for my newsletter. And bring the art to them, the best art I can bring. But doubt creeps in. 

It's all an opportunity to critique my paintings honestly and even brutally, and that is OK. 

So, for your consideration, I'm posting my newest mosaic painting, at the very top, and the original painting I made of the scene, below. I like them both, I have to say, though they are very different. I'd love to hear your insights. 

***

Next...

MY NEXT SHOW is the Rio Grande Spring Festival in Albuquerque, March 8-10, 

at the Lujan Exhibit Complex at the Expo NM Fairgrounds. 

I'm glad to say that this will be an indoor show. 

***

Dog of the Day

It's Ringo Starr, whose humans made and sold macrame jewelry just up the road from me during the Tubac show. Ringo was friendly and very well behaved.

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

***

A Final Thought

"The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate - it is life, intensified, brilliant life." 

-Alain Arias-Misson

One More Wrinkle

September Song Reprise

Oil on black canvas, 10x10, $125

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you want this painting! 

So, to add another dimension to the musings in the most recent post, here's a "regular" painting of the same scene as the loose mosaic of "September Song."  Your thoughts? 

My thoughts have swirled around the concept of just painting, however I feel like painting on any given day, at any given moment, and if the one painting is completely different in style and approach from the one before it or the one to follow, well, so be it. I will do what I can to make my booth at shows look like a crazy person didn't set it up, and aside from that, just do what calls out to be done. 

I had another idea, too - I have a solo show in July at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, and I am contemplating doing three views of each scene that I paint - a "regular" painting, a mosaic and an abstract. I am pretty excited about this idea! I'll let you know more as the process progresses. 

***

Dog of the Day

Peter and I were heading out yesterday when we saw something in the road, down Bayview. A piece of newspaper? A box? Nope - it was Dave Shields's dog, whose name I think is Lola, though perhaps it's something out. Dave is working on a house down there, and the dog was tied to something, but loosely enough that she could lay in the sunshine out in the road. That's the kind of town Wachapreague is. Dogs can - and do - nap in the roads here.

***

A Final Thought

"Art is born of humiliation."

- W. H. Auden

Three Mosaics

"Map of My Heart"

Oil on black canvas, 36x36

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and availability

I STUMBLED INTO "mosaic" painting early this year, and have spent a lot of time and energy on these paintings. A year later, I find myself loving - and questioning - them. 

What I love: 

• They call to me.  I find myself seeing the landscape in bits and pixels, focusing on how to build these daubed landscapes, being drawn more and more to views that can be painted in this way (it is not every landscape, I'm finding). 
• They contain some magic, in the making and in the viewing. I can look at one of these big pieces forever, and find myself drawn in by them, by the colors, the patterns, the repetition, the rhythm, the movement through the canvas. 

What I question: 

• It takes forever to make them. 
• It is physically difficult. My poor shoulder resents these paintings and the uncountable number of daubs and strokes required. 
• I have to ask high prices for them (see above!) 

And... in the end... a little voice sometimes says - "Just Paint." Quit finessing, quit this focus on method, quit daubing, just load up the knife, make long, loose, free strokes, Just Paint. 

This is a serious quandary, and I would love any feedback you'd like to give me. 

I have started a further experiment, with these two smaller pieces. They are looser, faster, less involved, less planned. The strokes are larger, the margins less fussy, the effect - I think - entirely different. What do you think? 

Autumn Hillside, 10x10, $150

September Song, 10x10, $150

***

Dog of the Day

Saw this trio in Onancock last week. Ho ho ho! 

***

A Final Thought

"What is art? Nature concentrated."

- Honore de Balzac

Windy Day on Assateague

Windy Day in Assateague, 12x24

oil on canvas

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and availability

IT WAS A FREAKISHLY warm day in November, and my friend Susan McGuire and I headed out to Assateague to paint. 

When I was painting in the national parks out west, I bought a National Parks pass - $85 and I am in, for the rest of my life! 

If you are 62 or older, that's what it costs, and I think that's a great deal. It costs $35 to get into most national parks, so if you plan on going to three before you die, it's a smart purchase. Like a "duh" purchase. 

It was windy in Assateague, as it usually is, and we used my giant van as a mobile wind break. We had a great time, made a few paintings, and managed to leave town without stopping at the Creamery, for the best ice cream on Earth. Usually, I'd say the Creamery ice cream is worth every calorie, but this time, we were just too cold and wind-blown. 

I'll have this painting, along with 2019 Wachapreague calendars, a book of paintings from 2018, and some other Eastern Shore pieces with me on Saturday at the Historic Onancock School, 6 College Ave., Onancock, for a little show from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Susan will be there with her beautiful paintings, and my friend Carol Baney will be there, too, with her steam-punk watch jewelry. I think we'll all have fun!  

***

New Mosaic Painting

HERE'S A DAY-BY-DAY, step-by-step view of how I make a mosaic painting. 

As you can see, it's slow going. Each day, I spent hours on this painting. I think it's going to be spectacular - but it's a slog, that's for sure. 

Sometimes, especially when I am rejected from show after show, as I have been in recent weeks, I wonder if the mosaic approach is wrong-headed, if it focuses too much on style over substance. 

But I think all art is, in the end, at least a little bit about style - otherwise, we would all paint the same, and would have all painted the same since time immemorial. 

These paintings call to me. They pull at my heart and my imagination, and so I think that they must be valid, they must be appealing, they must be as much about substance as style. 

What do you think? 

***

Dog of the Day

He came to my most recent show, and he was friendly enough, 

but a little scared - like so many people I know! 

***

A Final Thought

"Art, when inspired with love, leads to higher realms. 

Love art, and that art will open for you the inner life." 

- Meher Baba

Three Irises

Three Irises

Oil on black canvas, 16-inch diameter

Please click here to email me for price and delivery information

Shows the past two weekends were successful for me, but were not without their moments of doubt and pain.

In Wickford, Saturday dragged, with only sales of magnets and note cards, and I envisioned a repetition of the Bar Harbor show a couple weekends earlier, where my sales totaled a whopping $8. But Wickford show-goers started buying Saturday afternoon, and continued buying on Sunday. Yay!

At the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, Thursday, Friday and Sunday were virtually sale-less,  (again, I am thankful that I had magnets and note cards!) - but Saturday was a good day for sales, and then I had a delightful one on Monday, as I drove home.

I'm immensely grateful for each purchase, be it a $3 notecard or a $3,000 painting. I am well aware of the incredible success I have found in this life, and am grateful for it.

And most importantly, the shows are not only about sales. They are about art, and looking, and conversation and sharing. They are about my paintings touching the hearts of people who see them. Sometimes this results in sales - sometimes, it results in the sharing of experience, life stories, tales of love and hope and faith and loss.

I need to make sales to pay the bills, yes. But I need to hear the stories, meet the people, share the wonder and the hope. At the very heart of the whole process, I believe, this is what it is about.

***

Happy Buyers

Here are some happy buyers from Wickford and beyond. 

Next post, happy buyers from State College! 

***

Dog of the Day

Yup, it's a Carolina Dog! I met her in Wickford. Isn't she gorgeous?

 (She looks JUST LIKE our Carolina Dog, Koko)

***

A Final Thought

"An idea is salvation by imagination." 

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Early Morning Melody

Early Morning Melody

Oil on blackened, cradled beech panel, 16x16

At Center Framing & Art, West Hartford Center, CT

A few days ago, in a book called "The Secret Lives of Color," I encountered the idea that, in the past (and I'd add, in academia and serious intellectual artistic thought today), drawing - line, architecture, replication - were far more important than color. Drawing skills were what was valued, and I can see that when I think of the famous, pre-Impressionist paintings (that honestly - yes, I am a peasant! - mostly bore me).

When I read this, my entire painting life began to make sense to me, and I found my recent questions answered. I've often said that my paintings are all about color - and I have said that off-handedly. But truly and honestly, they are, and always have been, all about color, in a serious and fundamental manner.

Dropping the brush and taking up the knife was a vital step along this route. It allowed me to apply pure color to the canvas, while loosening my grip on line, drawing and detail.

All of this has helped me understand and accept the mosaics , which have worried me enormously of late. Now I see they are the next logical step in the exchange or abandonment of line for color. In large part, with these pieces, I am building the painting by using only the building blocks of color, light and shadow.

To some degree, this is what I've been doing all along - but the mosaics do it in an undisguised and raw way. They are harder to do than anything I've attempted so far. Next blog post, I'll write a little bit about why.

***

Upcoming! 

The Wachapreague Volunteer Firemen's Carnival is on, Wednesday-Saturday, through July 7. The carnival supports the volunteer fire department, and is great fun! There are rides, games, food and music, on the carnival grounds, Atlantic Avenue, Wachapreague.

Our Fourth of July parade starts at 11:30 on the Fourth, on Main Street in Wachapreague. It's not a long parade, so don't be late! Amazing, spectacular, astonishing fireworks start at dusk on the Fourth. You can park in the park to watch. Donations are appreciated - the fireworks are put on by Rich Pulchaski, a local pyrotechnic genius, and he funds them pretty much by himself.

I'll be at two shows in July -

• the Wickford Fine Art Festival, Wickford, RI, July 7-8 and 
• the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, State College, PA, July 12-15

And that is almost all my shows for the summer, so if you want to see my new work, I hope you'll be able to come! 

***

Dog of the Day

Met these two (and their service providers) in Onancock on Sunday. I've forgotten their names, but the one in the stroller is 15, I think! And the one walking is no spring chicken, either. 

***

A Final Thought

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge,

That myth is more potent than history,

That dreams are more powerful than facts,

That hope always triumphs over experience,

That laughter is the cure for grief.

And I believe that love is stronger than death."

- Robert Fulghum, 

via "The Painter's Keys," where you can subscribe to get an always thoughtful, usually fascinating and often freaskishly pertinent newsletter. For free. 

House in Accomack

House in Accomack

Oil on cradled beech board, 16x16 

Please click here to email me for price and availability

I stumbled onto what I am calling "mosaic painting" when I was working to figure out what to do at the very bottom of a giant painting I'd made earlier in the year for a window at Jerry's Artarama. 

I'd gotten to the bottom of the painting - painted the giant delphiniums and daisies and coneflowers - and I didn't know what to do. I didn't want just grass, or just dirt - I wanted some color down there. Some interest. Some action.

I'd been on a pastels kick just before I made this behemoth, and I decided to try using the oil paints in the way I'd been using pastels - putting down rough patches of color to suggest. I tried it and I liked it - and it occurred to me to make a painting using only that approach - and that's how the first of the mosaics came about. 

I'm working to learn the ins and outs of this mosaic painting, how to use color with this technique, how to get motion and distance and atmosphere into the painting, how to make it all work in a way that I like, and that I like doing. 

The biggest difference between the mosaics and my more regular style of painting is time. It takes me days and days and days to complete even a small mosaic. In the time it takes to make one of these, I can make three or even four "regular" paintings - if I work hard and quickly. 

So, while these are painstaking and time-consuming, I find them captivating and thrilling. I love looking at them. They shimmer, they change, they evoke, they evolve.

***

"Couldn't Drag Me Away"

Gesso, acrylic, ink, powder and gold, silver and copper leaf on canvas, 36x48

Please click here to email me for price and availability

MEANTIME, and, I suspect, in response to the precision of the mosaics, I've been presented with these "wild" paintings - extremely fast, extremely loose multi-media pieces that just announced themselves one afternoon in April. 

Initially, the bifurcation bothered me, but I am learning to accept it and delight in it. 

***

Newfoundland! 

THE TIMING is a little bit up in the air, but this summer (June-July or August-September), I am heading to Newfoundland to paint! 

It's a sponsored painting trip, meaning that you can buy a painting in advance, receive my sponsor-only travel- and painting blog while I'm on the road, and then, when I get home, choose your painting in the order in which you signed up. 

The trip will be somewhat limited, time-wise, so I am accepting only 12 sponsors. There are a few spots left, and one or more of them could be yours! It's $125 for a 10x10-inch painting, and $300 for a larger piece. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will also be making a painting trip to Utah, in the fall, so if you're interested in sponsorship but would prefer Utah, that's fine. 

For more on the Newfoundland trip, please click here to reach that page on my website, Jacobson Arts

***

Workshop Coming Up

I'LL BE TEACHING a palette-knife painting workshop in Westerly, RI, on Wednesday, June 13, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.! It's at Avondale Arts, 95 Watch Hill Road, Westerly... The class goes from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's $95, limited to 12 people, and you must have at least some painting experience. Contact Avondale Arts for more info and to sign up. (http://www.avondalearts.com/)                                            Want me to do a workshop in your area? Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

***

Dog of the Day

What a a face on this guy! I met him out in Arizona, and he was just as sweet as he looks. 

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

***

A Final Thought

"I make art. Sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all." 

- Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Never No More Blues

Never No More Blues

Oil on black canvas, 18x36

sold

Out here in Arizona, I've been loving life - and missing home. How I can have such conflicting emotions at the same time - both strong, both true, both deeply felt - amazes me, but seems to be a fact.

Friends of my dad's and stepmother's bought this painting yesterday, and I saw it hanging in their dining room, and it is stupendous. I'll get a photo next week and post it. It's so great how a painting or any art can change a room, alter an attitude, bring a smile. I love this painting, and am so glad it's hanging in a home where it's adored, and where it hangs with other beautiful pieces.

***

Fountain Hills

This weekend, I am off to the Great Fair at Fountain Hills, near Scottsdale. This is a gigantic show, with nearly 500 artists. I'm excited - and hoping that my art does not get lost in such a crowd. Also, I am hoping that I don't get lost in such a crowd. The photo above shows last year's festival - yikes! 

If you're in the area, or have friends in the area, please come to the show. I'm in Booth A-27, beside my friend, the talented painter Brenda Peo (check out her work here). 

***

Dog of the Day

It's little Woodreau, scruffy and fluffy and in need of a haircut, but looking just about as cute as a dog can look. Peter sent me this pic, along with pictures of the other dogs - and daffodils blooming at the side of the house! I miss home so very much. 

***

A Final Thought

"Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not." 

- John Keats

The Overlook

The Overlook

Oil on black canvas, 18x18

Please click here to email me for price and availability

The Overlook is where you go if you live in Westerly, RI, and need a tiny breathing break from life. People park along the edge of the road, look at the big homes and watch the waves break against the rocks. Sometimes there's a seal, but usually, it's just space and air and water and waves and the sweet scent of the ocean. 

***

Scenes from the Road

I arrived in Tubac, AZ, yesterday, on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, warm enough to chase away all thoughts of winter, snow, grayness, cold. The sun shone on the mountains, I could roll the window down in the van, and relax in the knowledge that I'd made it, safe and sound, across pretty much the entire country.

Peter waved, and the dogs barked and I pulled out of Wachapreague on Saturday, the van loaded with paintings, tent, and all manner of stuff for the three shows I'll do out here - Tubac, Feb. 7-11; Tucson Museum Spring Artisan Exhibit, Feb. 16-18; and the Fountain Hills Great Fair, Feb. 23-25. (Please click here for more info).

The country spun out before me, huge and fascinating and beautiful. The flat lands and salt marshes and tall pines of the Eastern Seaboard t fell away to the piney woods and palms of the Florida panhandle, the surprisingly industrial landscape of Alabama and Mississippi, with bristling ports and creaky bridges, giant gas globes frighteningly close to the highways - and then, all that is behind me, and I'm in Louisiana, and the bayous and water-soaked rice fields lead up to the Atchafalaya basin and the slim causeway that crosses it.

Then, it's Texas, 878 miles of it on I-10. Surprising hills and verdant fields in the east, the incredible bustle and 16-lane-wide highways of Houston, overarched with curving flyways and bridges - and then all civilization falls away, and Texas goes on and on and on and on. You drive by wind-blown towns with empty main streets and paint-peeled houses. Whole neighborhoods living in their RVs. Dogs on chains, and small herds of cows, and here and there goats and burros. Old cars rust into the land, and the door of an abandoned Winnebago swings in the wind, above a structure that once, clearly, was a patio.

The West starts in Texas, with little dots and splotches of red land, and then, up a hill and around a curve, mountains and buttes and a changed landscape. The New Mexico line is a celebration and a marker, and El Paso, with its stinking cow lots and thick array of stores - three Super Walmarts! - and frightening fly-way overpasses fades into memory.

Then, all of a sudden, after days and days of travel, I'm in Arizona, and breathing sunshine and welcome and the promise of seeing people I love, family, just up there, past the cities, by the sun-warmed mountains, glowing ochre and pink in the welcome evening light.

Photos, from top: me with my friend Bonnie, whom I visited in Florida. Then me with Sadie, Bonnie's flat-coated retriever. Next, a rest area bathroom in Texas - it's nicer than my house! Texas just has too much money! And finally, one of the windblown homes you see along the road. 

***

Dog of the Day

I met Peaches at a gas station in North or South Carolina. Her brand-new family drove to Georgia from Connecticut to get her. She's a rescue, and a fine, friendly, sweet puppy. 

***

A Final Thought 

"Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mother's face." 

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Morning's Glory

Morning's Glory

Oil on black canvas, 12x36

sold

The snow in our driveway stood waist-high in a hard, wind-blown drift. Even if we could have gotten out of the driveway, we'd have been mired in a hard, knee-high drift covering the road. No cars drove by - or, as far as I could tell, drove anywhere in town - for four days. Finally, at 8:30 at night on the fourth day after the storm, the state sent a plow to Wachapreague.

The plow piled up a wall of snow in front of our already drifted driveway, and the single-digit temperatures froze everything solid. Eventually, in 19-degree sun, we went out and dug and dug and dug, and then a neighbor, watching from his house, went and got the town's small front-loader and got us and our neighbor out. Our hero!

Being blocked in did wonders for my painting, though. Honestly, there was pretty much nothing else to do, so I painted and painted and painted, and ended up with this piece (and since this, others), in a style I am calling "mosaic painting."

It's again along the lines of the abstract realism that's always intrigued and drawn me, and which I've always wanted to paint - and have painted, more or less. The deconstructed landscape. A mix of detail and not-detail, energized by color and stroke and the puzzle-piece feeling of a mosaic or a stained-glass piece. I really love this, and feel a whole new sense of expression and discovery and joy.

You can see more of these on my website! Go to jacobson-arts.com, and click on "available paintings." There aren't many - yet - but that will change.

***

I'M HEADING TO ARIZONA in a week or so, and am delighted to be going to a warm, sunny place. My route and departure date are a bit up in the air, and they depend on the weather, which seems to be a mystery as of late. I'll be there for the month of February, and am doing three shows and a demo:    

•  Tubac Arts Festival, Feb. 7-11, Tubac, AZ. I don't know my booth number yet, but when I learn it, I will post it on the 2018 Shows page on the Jacobson Arts website.

• Tucson Museum Spring Artisans Market, Feb. 16-18, Tucson, AZ. Booth 29. 

• The Great Fair of Fine Arts and Crafts, Feb. 23-25, Fountain Hills, AZ. No booth number yet. 

• And my demonstration will be Feb. 14, starting at noon, at the San Pedro River Arts Council Gallery in Benson, AZ. 

All these events are free and open to everyone! 

***

Dog of the Day

I found this photo while I was looking for something else. It is intriguingly entitled "John and New Dog." I don't see John, and can't think of a John I know who might have a new dog, but if you know this dog, or John, please do let me know. It's a great dog, isn't it? 

***

A Final Thought

"The more you love, the more love you have to give. 

It's the only feeling we have which is infinite."

- Christina Westover