Mt. Humphreys

Mt. Humphreys / Oil on black canvas / 12x36

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you'd like to own this painting

ON THE WAY TO TUBAC, Carol and I decided to visit the Grand Canyon. It was out of our way, but not by much. Though we had been there a couple years ago, when Carol came out to do a show in Albuquerque with me, well, it is the Grand Canyon, so we decided to go again. 

We chose a scenic route, a road I've traveled before, that winds along 8,000-foot-high mountains and overlooks ones that are even higher, including Mount Humphreys, the tallest one in the painting. 

It was a cool morning when we pulled off the road by a yellow field to paint. The sun was shining, the air was thin and clear, and it was so quiet that I could hear a raven's wings flapping as he flew past me. 

I loved making this painting, and feel that it captures the beauty and serenity of the spot, and somehow, the enormity of it as well. 

When I finished, we headed on to the Grand Canyon, only to turn back, as there was a two-hour wait to get in. The Indian reservations are closed because of the covid, and the terrible toll it is taking on the Native American population. Because of that, one of the two wintertime gates into the park was closed, and all the visitors - and there were lots of them! - were funneled into one gate. 

So we left, and headed to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, and though it wasn't the Grand Canyon, it was a magical spot of color and wonder and incredible beauty. 

***

Dog of the Day

I'VE SEEN THIS lovely, porky gal around town on nearly all my morning walks. She is a sweetie, and is usually off leash, so she trots her full-bellied trot up to me and greets me every day. 

***

Thought for the Road

It Is Enough to Enter

the templar 

halls of museums, for 

example, or

the chamber of churches,

and admire
no more than the beauty

there, or
remember the graveness

of stone, or
whatever. You don't

have to do any
better. You don't have to 

understand
the liturgy or know history

to feel holy
in a gallery or presbytery. 

It is enough
to have come just so far. 

You need
not be opened any more

than does
a door, standing ajar. 

- Todd Boss

Moriarty, NM

 Moriarty, NM / Oil on black canvas / 8x10  / $120 including shipping

sold! 

THE FIRST PAINTING of a trip always frightens me. I haven't painted for the days of driving, and usually also for many days before the trip, while I was getting ready. 

Painting came to me out of the blue, and so I often wonder if, one day, it will go away, as fully and as mysteriously as it appeared. The run-up to the first painting of a trip is inevitably filled with these unhelpful thoughts. 

On this trip, I didn't plan this first painting. I didn't promise myself anything, I didn't expect anything. We pulled off in a rest stop in Moriarty, NM, and I looked across the highway at the landscape and decided this would be it. I got my stuff together and I started the painting before I had time to worry myself out of it. 

I painted fast, and without thought, and I was grateful. My best paintings are the fastest ones, and the ones I dither over the least. I love the way this one came out. It is bright, and simple, but has a lot in it, too. 

And for me, the best part was that it was done! The first painting was out of the way. YAY! 

***

Dog of the Day

Nice gig if you can get it. Saw this cutie in Walmart in Sahuarita, Arizona. 

***

Coda

 

"Some cowboys have too much tumbleweed in their blood to settle down." 

- Ken Alstad

Moonday Owl

Moonday Owl / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you would like to own this little painting! 

MY FRIEND CAROL AND I have arrived in Arizona, and I have to say, it feels great, so great, to be off the Eastern Shore and out in the world. 

We had a great trip, did some cool stuff, met some fun people, including the couple below - the Langs - who fixed up this school bus and then both quit their regular nursing jobs to hit the road, and work in temporary nursing positions for as long as the adventure continues. 

Here's their bus, outside and in. That's a little woodstove in the back, keeping things nice and warm!

They brought Lars, their Flemish Giant! 

***

WE HAD GREAT BARBECUE at Tyler's in Amarillo, Texas

***

HAD FUN SEEING CADILLAC Ranch, outside of Amarillo (and painting a car, too). Click here to read more about this fun public art extravaganza

***

WE VISITED Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM, where would-be scuba divers were being trained...

***

AND DROVE THROUGH Tucumcari, NM, with its great billboards and funky decorations

What a country this is! 

***

Coda

"Once a year, go someplace you've never been before." 

- the Dalai Lama

 

The Way In

The Way In / Oil on black canvas / 16x20 / $500 including shipping

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you'd like to buy this painting

TO MY AMAZEMENT, I have started dating. It was a brief experience, and it ended not well but not horribly, and while the whole thing utterly shocked me, it was an important if painful step, and I feel blessed and grateful to have taken it. 

The person with whom I was involved could not have been more different from Peter, and perhaps that made the whole thing easier - though none of it was easy. I wept for taking my heart away from for grieving for Peter. I trembled at what felt, at first, like a betrayal of him. I scolded myself for taking this respite from grief. But I went ahead.  

It was hard to take that big step into living again, and to be reminded, with each inch of road I traveled, that I was edging away from Peter, from grief, from my old life, even, in a way, from my old self. Taking a first, brief journey on what might or might not be a long new road. 

I had thought I'd be alone forever, that love would live only as a memory, and that that would be enough. And who knows? Maybe this small and, in the end, unhappy romance was the only one that will come my way between now and whenever I am too old. But maybe it's not. 

And even with the pain of failure and breakup - a pain I haven't felt or considered for 40 years - I hope it's not the only one. But if it is, I still believe it was important to do this, to wager my heart on the hand of love. 

***

Coda

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mind.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things. 

- Mary Oliver

Cardinal in a Dogwood Tree

Cardinal in a Dogwood Tree / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you'd like to buy this painting

THE CARDINALS HAVE BEEN FLOCKING to the feeder, and it makes me happy to see them.

The males catch my eye, always, but it's the females I find myself watching, and enjoying their subtle colors, the way their plumage blends with the still wintry, mustard-colored grass. In fact, thinking about them this morning, the way they flit and flash and tilt their heads, feathers showing orange and yellow and even a hint of green, thinking about them has spurred me to make another painting of a female. 

***

IN A WEEK, if all goes according to plan, I leave for Arizona for about a month. This is my usual winter trip to visit Dad and Paula, though this time, it will be different. 

For starters, I usually head out in late January. I've never been there in March and April, and am hoping to see the desert in a little bit of bloom, and the country, in fact, in a little bit of bloom. 

Usually, I choose my route to avoid snowstorms and ice storms. And while they are still out there, or were, this week, it will probably be spring storms, thunder and lightning, tornadoes, that I'll be trying to avoid.

My friend Carol is coming with me this time. I've never made the trip with another person in the car, and while I am a little hesitant about it, and about not having those long, lonely hours on my own, driving and watching in silence, I think it's probably good this trip to not have those long, lonely hours on my own, driving and watching in silence. 

We will stay for a few weeks, spend lots of time with Dad and Paula, and I will paint, on the way, out there and on the way back. I am not doing a formal painting trip this time, but will post the paintings and the story of my travels, here on the blog. 

I have a lot to do before I leave, but it will get done. I am so hungry to see and paint and drive through a different landscape, I can barely wait to go! 

***

Coda

"I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart." 

- Vincent Van Gogh

Spring Fields

Spring Fields / Oil on canvas / 18x24 / $650 plus shipping

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you'd like to own this painting! 

SO MUCH RAIN HAS FALLEN that now, even after a week of sun and wind, there are puddles in the fields, and in the lawns and throughout the low places in the woods. I love the way these bits of standing water pick up the colors of the sky, and put them where they should not be - a little bit of heaven in the middle of a field. 

I noticed the other day that around the puddles in some of the fields, grass or clover or whatever is planted there has started to green up, in a beautiful circle around the puddle. Water of life, certainly. 

I love painting fields, with the furrows leading somewhere - usually to a house or barn in the back of the field. But on a drive to Frederick, Maryland, this past weekend, I noticed fields with furrows leading off obliquely, and in patterns. 

Different, for me - and I like it. What do you think? 

***

Coda

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold; when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade." 

-  Charles Dickens, by way of my friend Lisa Zander

My Octopus Teacher

My Octopus Teacher / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

sold

A WHILE AGO, I asked friends on and off Facebook to give me names of what I call "feel-good movies," which, in my mind, are generally (but not always) smaller movies, generally but not always with lesser-known actors. 

My friends assembled a great list, which I've included below. I'm not sure that all of these qualify as "feel-good," but I've included even the ones that I think maybe are just comedies, and not necessarily feel-good movies. I'd put "A Fish Called Wanda" in this category, for instance. 

I am not sure that "My Octopus Teacher" qualifies as a feel-good movie, mainly because the octopus dies. The narrator (who is the only other character in the movie) tells you right at the beginning that the octopus is going to die, so I was prepared. But I have avoided all sort of movies because it is clear to me, sometimes even from the titles, that the dog/cat/squirrel/whatever was going to die. 

The movie so enchanted me, octopus death notwithstanding, that I made this painting. 

OK, here's the list. If there are movies on it that you sort of remember from a while ago, but haven't seen in a few years, I encourage you to go back and take a look. I've been delighted when I've done that. 

Big Night

The Thomas Crown Affair

My Octopus Teacher

The Birdcage

Enola Holmes

Bread & Tulips (available on YouTube)

Legally Blonde

October Sky

Shirley Valentine

American Dreamer

Must Love Dogs

City Island

Strictly Ballroom

Tin Cup

Radium Girls

The Goldfinch

Don't Let Go

Genius

Tiger

Just Mercy

Penguin Bloom

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

A Model for Matisse

Waking Ned Devine

Billy Elliot

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Big Little Farm

Little Miss Sunshine

Funny Farm

Keeping Mum

Lars and the Real Girl

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Baghdad Cafe

Harold & Maude

Notting Hill

Love Actually

Dear Frankie

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Mrs. Palfrey at the Clermont

Tea with Mussolini

Madame Souzatska

A League of Their Own

Hunt for the Wilder People

Whale River

Garden State

School of Rock

Julie and Julia

Something's Gotta Give

Rudy

Inn of the Sixth Happiness

The Holiday

Chef

Hamlet 2

What About Bob

Someone Like You

Crazy, Stupid Love

Hairspray

Goonies

Silver Linings Playback

The Fisher King

The Princess Bride

When Harry Met Sally

My Cousin Vinny

Joe's Apartment

Angel in the House

Hugo

Pleasantville

Wall-E

The Station Agent

The Dig

Nobody's Fool

Keep On Keepin' On

The American President

Dave

Romancing the Stone

Please Don't Eat the Daisies

The Hundred-Foot Journey

A Knight's Tale

The Intern

Up

It Happened on Fifth Avenue

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Operation Petticoat

Some Like It Hot

any Studio Ghibli film

Amalie

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

While You Were Sleeping

Sleepless in Seattle

When Harry Met Sally

Finding Your Feet

Grumpy Old Men

Peanut Butter Falcon

Second Hand Lions

The Proposal

Nothing to Lose

The Magic of Belle Isle

Slumdog Millionaire

Yesterday

RV

Fool's Gold

Blow the Man Down

Shakespeare in Love

Book Club

Enchanted April

Women

Under the Tuscan Sun

Mr. Holland's Opus

The Secret Garden

The Full Monty

Two Family House

Say Anything

Begin Again

Truly, Madly, Deeply
Singing in the Rain

Heaven Can Wait

***

Coda

 

"Your aspirations are your possibilities." 

- Samuel Johnson

Chicken

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

sold

LENT STARTED WEDNESDAY, and for the first time in my life, I am participating. The particulars of my journey aren't important, but in general, I am giving up my obsessions for the next 40 days.

My initial idea was to give up candy. That sounded sensible and like something that I could do. Difficult but not impossible, and good for me. I have a very addictive personality, and my craving for candy was getting a little out of control. 

Then I began thinking about Lent, faith, spirituality, the sense of and opportunity for renewal, here in the depths of winter, and I began to see a different path, a more sweeping one that could have more resonance. 

This morning, as I contemplated the next 40 days, as I thought about what obsesses me, and how to leave those things behind - or at least leave them alone - for the next days and weeks, I began to see the amount of time and energy they take in my life, and I was sort of stunned. So even in contemplating all of this, even before starting, I have received a gift - of vision and understanding and, honestly, of time. 

And so the other side of this is to figure out what to do with the extra time and space in my life. During Lent, one is supposed to give more, and give more of oneself in service, and so I am thinking about that, too. 

Are you on a Lenten journey? What are you finding out about yourself, your faith, your spiritual state of being? 

***

Coda

"The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, 
which no man could have dreamt would have come his way." 

-William Murray

Muskrat

Muskrat / Oil on black canvas / 5x7/ $68, including shipping

sold

TUESDAY AFTERNOON, the sun shone, absurdly bright after 10 days or more of rain and gray sky. It was a single day's respite, and it was a beauty - nearly 60 degrees, windy enough to dry some of the huge puddles covering neighbors' lawns, and to blow the rich scent of springtime through the tang of the marsh air. 

Sunrise came well before 7, and sunset at 5:45. And as the afternoon warmed and lengthened, I heard peepers singing! 

Today,  it is cold again. Thursday, the rain returns. But Tuesday, for a moment, spring drew a breath, and here on the shore, we all exhaled in joy together. 

***

Coda

"We have more strength than will; and when we say things are impossible, 

it is often just excuses we make for ourselves." 

- Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Gotta Love a Snail

Gotta Love a Snail / Oil on black canvas / 5x5 / $68 including shipping

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you'd like this little guy

A SNAIL MUCH LIKE THIS ONE was the very first painting to sell in the Love series on the Oil & Water Facebook page my friend Susan McGuire and I started recently. (https://www.facebook.com/Oil-Water-104885681569296). 

Not only did it sell about a minute after I posted it, but directly afterwards, several other people contacted me, wanting it - so I made more. 

Here is the final snail Love piece. All my Love paintings had hearts hidden in them (or not so hidden). This one won't be dry in time for a Valentine's Day delivery, but love late is still love, isn't it? 

It always interests me, and often surprises me, when people clamor for certain paintings. Crab paintings took off in somewhat the same way, and the little mountaintop pieces I make up from my imagination, and the leftover paint on my palette, seem to always find a home. 

***

Coda

Flirtation

After all, there's no need

to say anything

at first. An orange, peeled

and quartered, flares

like a tulip on a wedgewood plate

Anything can happen. 

Outside the sun

has rolled up her rugs

and night strewn salt 

across the sky. My heart

is humming a tune

I haven't heard in years! 

Quiet's cool flesh -- 

let's sniff and eat it. 

There are ways

to make of the moment

a topiary

so the pleasure's in

walking through. 

- Rita Dove

 

Coffee Jones

 Coffee Jones / Oil on black canvas / 4x12 / special $68 including shipping! 

sold! 

SUSAN MCGUIRE AND I recently started a page on Facebook called Oil & Water (https://www.facebook.com/Oil-Water-104885681569296). She paints in all media, but primarily watercolor. And I paint nearly exclusively in oils. 

The page is mainly for projects we do together, to challenge ourselves and each other, to mark a season or an occasion - or just for fun. We agreed that everything on the page will sell for $68, including shipping. 

For Valentine's Day, we did a Love project. My plan was to hide a heart in each painting, and I had a good time coming up with the ideas. This is one I've wanted to do for a while. I always enjoy watching the cream make its way through iced coffee - the abstract designs intrigue me, and I enjoy the feeling that twisting cream gives me of floating, of movement, of space and time. And I am a little bit of a coffee freak. 

Usually my 4x12s are more expensive, but I'd run out of 5x7 canvases, so there are a couple on the page that are less expensive than they might be otherwise, and this is one of them. 

You can never really count on the post office, I know, but if you let me know today that you want this painting, it might get to you in time to be an on-time Valentine's Day gift. No guarantees! (And if your valentine really loves you, he or she won't mind if it doesn't reach you quite on time...)

***

Coda

Valentine

simplicity

say sleep

or

shall we

shower

have an apple

you are

as I need

water

shall I move?

do you dream? 

shallow snow

flesh

melt this

- Tom Pickard

Sunset Through the Trees

Sunset Through the Trees / Oil on black canvas/ 8x10/ $120 including shipping

sold

I AM HEALING. I see it nearly every day, sometimes in big steps, sometimes small. And while I am glad for this - because, who wouldn't be? - there is part of me that feels a bit of sorrow about it. Does this make sense? In grieving Peter, in mourning him, I am close to him. Respectful of the life he led, the life we led together. I am with him. 

In healing, I am moving away. I am taking steps on my own. I am learning to live without him. I know this is necessary, and it is what I want, but in a way, I rue my burgeoning independence, my quickening heart, the delight I feel in new adventures, new ideas, new friends. 

I will continue to heal, I know, and to grow and prosper, and find my way in this world without him. I'll  probably never be entirely without sadness, and that is OK with me. That little bit of sadness is as much a link as the memories of joy, of love, and the sharing of our lives. 

***

Coda

You, Therefore

For Robert Philen

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:   

you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:   

if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been   

set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost   

radio, may never be an oil painting or

Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are

a concordance of person, number, voice,

and place, strawberries spread through your name   

as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me   

of some spring, the waters as cool and clear

(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),   

which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:   

and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium

or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star   

in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving

from its earthwards journeys, here where there is   

no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,

when there was snow), you are my right,

have come to be my night (your body takes on   

the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep   

becomes you): and you fall from the sky

with several flowers, words spill from your mouth

in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees   

and seas have flown away, I call it

loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,   

a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,   

and free of any eden we can name

- Reginald Shepherd