Dry Wash

 Dry Wash / Oil on black canvas / 11x14 / $250 including shipping. 

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

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUTHWEST always inspires me. It challenges me, forcing me to use different colors, try different approaches, think and see and paint differently. It's exciting, and it's often difficult, and is always liberating - and surprising, too, which is a good thing for me. 

This painting, like so many of the paintings I've made that have turned out to be my favorites, is of a nothing sort of place. There's a teeny shopping plaza up the street, and to get from there to the road, on one side, you go over a bridge that crosses a dry wash. I looked up as we crossed it the other day, and the light was bouncing off the weedy shrubs, the mesquites, the dry pinkish soil, and I knew it was a painting. I could see the painting before it was finished. Before I even started it. 

It's a bridge I've crossed dozens, if not hundreds of times in the decade that I've been coming out here, and it is a landscape I've never noticed. One that I'd bet almost no one notices. But these places, these quotidian, unremarkable, characteristic spots, these are the ones that build a landscape, aren't they? Just as the unremarkable, daily, regular remarks and thoughts and hopes and dreams are what build our characters and personalities. 

Or at least, that's what I think this morning. 

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Dog of the Day

I'VE BEEN WALKING around Tubac in the mornings, and making a special side trip to see the burros in a farm/ranch place at the east edge of town. You KNOW this will become a painting! 

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A Thought for the Road

"Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as it will." 

- A. W. Tozer

(Thanks to my sister for suggesting this header for the final area. It's the best so far. 

Do you have a different idea? I'm open to suggestions! )

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.

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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). 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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A Final Thought 

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Arivaca Dawn

Arivaca Dawn

Oil on canvas, 20x20

Please click here to contact me for price and availability

In just a few hours, I'll leave Arizona and head east, toward home - and I can hardly wait.

I've had a great stay here, and I'm sorry to go. Dad and Paula and I have spent wonderful time together. The sun has warmed my bones and chased my winter blahs away. I had great fun with my friends Cynthia and Kevin, and their friends (and now mine, too), Ruth and Tim. I saw my Arizona friends, had lunch with Linda and Lois, visited my artist friend Brenda Peo and saw her home and studio. I had a somewhat lackluster but not terrible show, sold a painting afterwards (one of my favorites ever), and made this painting, which I absolutely adore.

I could stay another two weeks or more and still be deliriously happy here, but the pull of home is strong, and I can't wait to get there, to be with Peter and the dogs, hang out with my friends, spend time in Wachapreague, smell that Eastern Shore wind and see that beautiful Eastern Shore light.

So it's the perfect time to leave.

Above, my painting in the landscape. Below, the moment I painted.

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Stuff I've Seen

I suspect I've posted this before, but it makes me smile every time. 

Exit Zero, the last exit in Texas on I-10

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Dog of the Day

Saw this cutie in Florida. Adorable! 

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

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A Final Thought

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." 

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Chipping In

Chipping In

Oil on canvas, 20x20

Please click here to email me about price and availability

I was horrified to notice that my first two golf paintings (Lining Up the Putt and Sunday Drive) were of men, while a small painting I made (Laundry Day - haven't posted yet...) was of a woman. How sexist am I? Sheesh!

So I made sure that this third painting was of a woman, and an older, gray-haired woman, at that. I love the motion in here, and the explosion of sand and ball out of the trap.

Coach Joe suggested that I offer to make paintings of people golfing in golfers' favorite holes. The 16th at St. Andrews, the 4th hole green at the Master's... Whatever your favorite hole is, if I can get a photo of it, I can paint a golfer like you at the hole.

What do you think? Is this an idea that would please a golfer?

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Stuff I've Seen

While my Florida show was a disaster, my visit was not. I saw Eric and Mary, old friends, and spent time with them at their home on the Suwanee River. While there, I met Ike, a friend who lives nearby. Eric announced that I was a painter, and Ike pulled this statue from a shelf. At the time, the statue was all gold, like the shirt. 

"Can you paint this?" he asked, and I said sure. 

I think it's really cool! 

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Shameless Self-Promotion

This is last year's booth at the Tubac Arts Festival, here in Tubac, Arizona. The show is coming up, Wednesday through Sunday. If you're in the area, please come! I hope to be on Plaza Road, where I've been in the past. 

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Dog of the Day

Here is the delightful Baby Girl, left, with the aforementioned Eric, right. 

AND, I got to drive the four-wheeler. That was fun! 

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A Final Thought

"Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you still have one." 

- Stella Adler

Pony Express

Pony Express

Oil on black canvas, with gold leaf

At Priba Furniture, 210 Stage Coach Trail, Greensboro, NC

My beautiful gallery in the JH Adams Hotel in High Point, NC, has closed. But as my grandmother used to say, when one door closes, another opens. That's been the case with me - and with remarkable timing, too.                                                                                                                   I was in Arizona, nursing my injured knee, when I got a call from Gwenn Lance, who has run a gallery in Greensboro, NC, for 14 years. She was on the brink of moving to Priba, a large furniture store in Greensboro, and she wanted my work.                                                                                      On my way home from Arizona, I stopped in Greensboro, met Gwenn and saw the beautiful store and the amazing art she's collected and hung on the walls there. It's an exciting venture, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. 

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ANOTHER FUN OPPORTUNITY came along last week, when artist Tamara Gonda asked me to participate in an artist-question series she's writing for her blog. I was her first guest artist, and am honored by the opportunity. 

To read the piece, click here - (http://www.tamaragonda.com/blog/march-art-talk-month-carrie-jacobson) and be sure to check out Tamara's work and her other blog posts, too. 

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I've never seen self-checkout lanes in a convenience store/gas station, 

but I saw them at this Pilot outside of Knoxville, TN! 

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Dog of the Day 

Saw this cutie at the show in Tubac. Very serious... 

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A Final Thought 

"To be an artist is to believe in life." 

- Henry Moore