Two Wrens

Two Wrens / Oil on black canvas / 4x12 / 
$72 sale price, including shipping / $68 for blog readers! 

sold!

THE VIRTUAL SIDEWALK SALE of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts is now on - and it runs through Sunday. Most of my current available paintings are on sale, on my website, Jacobson Arts (http://jacobson-arts.com), and shipping is free during the sale. 

Because you all are so faithful and supportive, you get a special deal on this painting, or on any of the paintings on the website. If you want any of them - and you want an additional discount (some people do not!), please email me and I'll let you know the blog-reader price. It might not be much off, but to show my appreciation for your faithful readership, I will take at least a bit more off, if you like. 

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For Today

He who shall hurt the little wren

Shall never be beloved by men. 

- William Blake

Ruffled

Ruffled / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 - free shipping! 

sold!

THE VIRTUAL SIDEWALK SALE of the virtual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts starts Thursday, and I am participating. Most of the paintings on my website, Jacobson Arts, are on sale, and shipping or delivery is free. (I am hoping that someone from Alaska doesn't buy my 48x60 inch floral painting!). 

The small paintings aren't on sale - except to you, my loyal blog readers, and also to my patrons. And you blog readers can get an extra discount on the larger paintings if you like - just let me know, in the email you send to buy the painting (you will understand this when you do it) that you're a loyal reader of this blog, and I'll email you the discounted price, and you can decide whether you want to buy the painting at that price. 

As always, installment plans are available. If you want the painting, I will find a way to get it to you.

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For Today

I RECEIVE A REGULAR, free newsletter called The Painter's Keys. It often has wonderful stories, ideas, prompts. This one delighted me, and I will keep it to send out to all the people who tell me all the reasons they can't get around to painting. Here's the link: https://painterskeys.com/sixteen-reasons-wont-paint-today/

Starling

Starling / Oil on black canvas / 5x5 / $68 including shipping

This bird has flown!

OK, THE WHOLE LONG NASTY story of starlings rang in my ears as I painted this, but I found myself admiring them. Being impressed by their resourcefulness, their success at survival. Their resilience. 

They are not native to North America, though by now, they might as well be. They compete for food and for nests, and they often win. They are so amazing at finding feeders and emptying them that many people, myself included, take the feeders in regularly when the starlings come to call. 

So, yes, they are pests, they are invasive, they cause lots of damage to crops and animal feed. They disrupt backyard ecosystems... but they are kind of pretty, in a dark and glinting, emerald and ebony sort of way. 

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My Loyal Blog Readers

STARTING THURSDAY, my larger paintings will be on sale on my website, Jacobson Arts (http://jacobson-arts.com). 

The small paintings will not be discounted, though shipping will be free for nearly everything. But if you loyal blog readers buy any painting, during my Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts virtual show and sale, please make sure I know that you're a blog reader, and you will receive an extra discount - if you want it - on even the small pieces. 

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For Today

The Germ

A mighty creature is the germ,

Though smaller than the pachyderm.

His customary dwelling place

is deep within the human race.

His childish pride he often pleases

by giving people strange diseases.

Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?

You probably contain a germ. 

- Ogden Nash

Red-Tailed Hawk

Red-Tailed Hawk / Oil on black canvas / 4x4 / $48 including shipping

sold!

I FIND MYSELF WANTING to go places - even planning to go places - and then waffling, or pulling back entirely, because of the covid, and now, because of the new explosions of the covid. 

And when I look ahead, there seems no end to it. 

So I am remembering, again and again, to look on this time as a precious gift. Reminding myself to Live in This Moment. To be patient. To be kind. To try to be good to someone else. Do something to improve someone's day. 

It is not easy. What is easy is slipping back into my impatient, self-focused, hurried, complaining life. 

So I am trying to stay upright, to be grateful, and to look upon this as a special, different, positive time. 

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For Today

Dead Tired

Walking very slowly

I looked up

And saw six red-tailed hawks

Circling over and over

Above my head. 

Pointing it out to my friend,

She said,

"Something must have died!"

Looking about

The area was empty

Except for me.

I began to move

A bit more quickly. 

- C.J. Krieger

Crow

Crow / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 unframed / $68 including shipping

sold!  

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I made a painting for Erika and Paul, in celebration of the five-year anniversary of their wedding. In it, I made a breakthrough - I think. 

It's something I've been edging up to for years - using colors not for their colors, exactly, but for their light and dark values - at least in part. 

So I'm not reaching for blue because it's "blue," necessarily, but because it's a dark, cool shade that recedes from your eyes, and speaks of "shadows" and "underneath" and "farther away." 

Reds and yellows and oranges - the hot colors - speak to me of sunlight and brilliance, the tops of things, the bright bits. Whether they are really, truly red or orange or yellow or pink ceases to matter (mostly). They are the shining parts of the painting. 

In a way, I think, in that painting for Erika and Paul, and in many of my paintings, more or less, over the years, I am choosing colors for the jobs they do, rather than the colors they are. 

Though I've been painting this way for a while, I believe, this is the first glimmer of understanding I've had about it. I still don't totally get it - and, in fact, I might be wrong. But now that I have this idea, I'm experimenting with it, as in the crow above. 

So let me know what you think. I am sure I'm not the first person who's used color like this. If you like it or hate it, I'm interested to hear. If you know others who paint like this, or who painted like this, please tell me. 

Meantime, here's the painting I made for Erika and Paul: 

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For Today

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,

wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns.

How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,

fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard

and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots. 

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous

domes and there is no need to memorize a succession

of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.

No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's

little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home

than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.

Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?

Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera

eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a cafe ignorant of the word for ice,

I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress

known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning

paper, all language barriers down,

rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way. 

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone 

willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.

I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal

what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.

It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself

and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off

down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna. 

- Billy Collins

Cardinal Looking Around

Cardinal Looking Around / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 includes shipping

THESE HOT, HUMID DAYS broil over, one into the other, thick and rich with southern summertime and scorching similarity. 

I look at my calendar a few times daily to help me sort it out. I ask Alexa, too, and hang my internal calendar on a couple events that are solidly scheduled every week - Wednesday is trash day and Thursday, I talk to my counselor. Both are things I never want to miss. 

Nearly every day, get up early, make coffee, write in my journal and then walk with Liesl and the dogs, and sometimes with Liesl's friend Lexie. Nearly every day, I paint. Nearly every day, I make three meals, cooking something good for dinner. Nearly every moment of every single day, I miss Peter, and think how much different this covid summer would be if he were here. 

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Virtual Online Show and Sale

THE CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA FESTIVAL of the Arts is one of the big, important, national shows that usually accepts me every year. I was accepted again this year, but the on-the-ground show was canceled. 

So they are making a virtual show, and it sounds like lots of fun! More than 150 artists, from 32 states, are participating. Many - like me! - will be offering discounts on art and shipping (free shipping for me, plus discounts on many paintings during the festival, July 9-12). 

I'm one of the artists doing live demos - I'll be conducting my regular painting workshop in my live festival time, Saturday, July 11, at 1 p.m. Eastern. Other artists are doing demos and workshops throughout the festival. 

There's much more! Please check the website - https://arts-festival.com/  - or any of the festival's social media feeds - Facebook/CentralPAFestivaloftheArts; Instagram: @cpartsfestival; Twitter: @CPArtsFestival - for more information. 

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For Today

"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education 

than to have education without common sense." 

- Robert Green Ingersoll

Crow Looking Back

Crow Looking Back / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 unframed / $68 - free shipping

sold!

TO ALL WHO MIGHT BE WONDERING, "Three Geese" has found its home. And, interestingly, it was bought by the person whom I thought of when I thought of that painting. So I believe it has gone to its rightful owner! 

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Bucket List

I HAD ABSOLUTELY no idea that I coveted a black eye. All these years, all these decades, and I just didn't know, until I got one. 

It happened unromantically enough. I'd been watering the front garden, and my shoes were wet. I slipped on the threshold and fell full-length onto the living room floor. 

After several tries, I was able to get a call through to Liesl and Lexie, and they came back (we had just finished walking), cleaned the blood off of me and the floor and bandaged me up, pretty much good as new. 

I talked to my dad, who asked if I had lost consciousness (no), or if I had a headache (no), and he said I should be fine. No concussion. He used to be a brain surgeon, so he knows. He's the one who told me I'd have a black eye. 

Sure enough, I do! I'm quite excited and proud. And I've made up a good story - Vincent Van Gogh and I were arguing about my ear. He was insisting that I cut it off, and I said No Way - I like my earrings too much to lose one ear! OK, he said, then it's a black eye for you. 

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For Today

The Crow's Calling

A bird moved as if

a black hole shaped

like a crow was strutting

a path across bright playground

grass before rising, leisurely,

at an angle, to observe

from the perch

of a stark eucalyptus

to caw forth a sermon,

determined, inspired as a priest

on a foreign mission

irnoring the fact of our

language difference. 

- Peg Quinn