I Do
Oil on canvas, 16×20

By Carrie Jacobson

I was driving by the courthouse in Accomack last summer, when I saw this wedding happening, under the shade of the big trees there on the lawn. The groom was clearly a soldier, and I imagined that he was about to leave for a tour of duty. But who knows?

I am just starting to try painting people, and I like this painting. I think it has a real feeling, tells a real story. Peter and I have been married since 1988, and I am thankful every day that we found each other.

By Carrie Jacobson

A New Day

By Carrie Jacobson

This day dawned bright and sharp, the light fragile and pink, the field white with frost. The beauty of the morning startled me, woke me up, and I hurried to get my easel and paints, and then painted, standing there in the yard in my pajamas and a sweatshirt.

I hope that your days and your year dawn with such beauty and grace and power.

Mr. Owl

By Carrie B. Jacobson

Where the heck have I been? Texas, New England, and flat on my back with strep throat. But no matter, I’m home and getting well, and painting again.

At Wal-Mart the other day, I was waiting in a line at customer service (there were no lines at the checkout stations. Zero. A Christmas miracle – or just the way they run things down here).  I got talking to the man beside me. It was in the 40s outside, and windy, and we chatted about it before I pointed out that I was wearing only a denim jacket, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket at all.

“Sure is better here than where I moved from,” he said, and after a little bit more talking, he told me that he had moved from Monticello.

I told him we’d lived in Cuddebackville, and we laughed about the small-world thing, and confessed that we never hoped to live anywhere else but the Eastern Shore.

Those of us who live on the Shore love it. I love the light here, the pace of life, the friendly people, the beautiful landscapes.

Of course, life here is not without its drawbacks. It takes 90 minutes to get pretty much anywhere, if you want to see friends or family away from the shore, or if you want to shop at more exciting venues than Wal-Mart or CVS. It’s tough to ship packages from here, though the women at the print shop that does FedEx shipping are saving boxes for me to package my paintings. Medical services are perhaps not the best here, but where are they the best, outside of huge metropolitan centers?

So shopping and shipping and doctors might pose some problems. But the air is clear, people wave when they drive by, and our little town is quiet and peaceful and decked out for the holidays. Lights are strung across Main Street, and a Christmas tree stands in the gazebo in our little seaside town park. On Saturday at dusk, we’ll turn out to sing carols and celebrate the lighting of the tree, and we will shiver and rub our hands together as the wind blows in off the Atlantic.

October Morning, 10×10

By Carrie Jacobson

There is some sort of balance, it occurs to me, between the shortening of the days and the brightening of the trees. The vivid colors of the leaves, and the grasses and here in Virginia, the yellow soybean and red sorghum fields, these seem to make up for the lengthening darkness. And while it’s not an even trade, it’s often a good one. Sometimes, I think, the autumn colors give me more than the shorter daylight takes away.

I rise early, always, and these mornings, these dawns, seem long, and dark, and impenetrable. I do know that the sun will come up every day – but sometimes in these long dark mornings, I find myself questioning that certain fact. I will squawk and grumble along with everyone else when we set the clocks back an hour, but the early-rising part of me will rejoice. (Probably in secret).

Until then, I will glory in the colors of autumn, soak them in and think of them as added sunlight.

Poppies No. 2, 16×16

By Carrie Jacobson

I started painting flowers a couple years ago, and I admit, I started timidly, never having been a real fan of floral painting. But over the years, I found that I liked to paint sunflowers, and tulips, and I also found that people like to buy floral paintings.

So I kept at it, kept experimenting and discovering, trying new approaches and new colors and new flowers, and just this past week or so, experimented my way into a style I really, really love.

It reminds me of Peter Max, with the bright colors and the black outlines, and the whimsical shapes. I wrote about this on my own blog, and a few readers chimed in with their own Peter Max and Max-related memories. One wrote to me about the favorite dress she had as a kid – one that she remembered because of my painting… and her memory reminded me of my favorite dress as a kid. It was a swingy minidress, covered with blurry, bright red and orange and pink flowers – not so different from the flowers in this painting!

At any rate, if any of you want to see this painting, and my other new florals, in person, check out the Paradise City Arts Festival this weekend in Northampton, MA. It’s a drive from the mid-Hudson, I know, but it should be a pretty drive, full of fall colors. And the show offers a wonderful collection of art and high-end craft – and good food!

Meantime, I hope you have great memories of beautiful gardens, bright flowers – and your favorite clothes!

Rooster No. 5

By Carrie Jacobson

I was emailing a friend who is also an artist and a collector of my paintings, and she wrote about how scary it is to make a painting for someone. For anyone, really. They might not like it, it might not look like the person/dog/scene that the buyer was picturing, the buyer might think you’re a talentless hack…. and on and on.

I confessed that I’m scared pretty much all the time. As I drive up to a show, and especially to a new show, I am often literally shaking. I’m afraid that the people at the show, buyers and artists, are going to look at my paintings and see right off the bat that I am self-taught, that I don’t know the rules, that I’m a messy painter, that I can’t draw, and on and on and on.

But I told her that I just get a hold of myself, pull myself together, and go on and do it. Be scared, sure – but do it. We are all scared – or at least, I suspect we all are.

After I wrote this to her, I went to the home page of the Piedmont Plein Air Paintout, that I’m participating in this week. I started looking at the paintings by the participating artists  – and totally freaked out again. Sigh.

I left the site, got a handle on my fear and paranoia, and went back to the site later in the day. When I looked again, I could see clearly that my paintings do stand up next to everyone else’s – and after all, I was chosen to participate! That should be enough to quiet the fears, right?

I’m sharing all of this not so you all will tell me that I’m a good painter, etc. I’m sharing it because so many people tell me all the time how frightened they are – of painting, of trying to paint, of applying to shows, of thinking of quitting their jobs to follow their dreams. People tell me how brave I am – and I just wanted to share that, really, I am not brave. I am scared and hesitant, but I go ahead and do it anyways. And anyone can do this. It doesn’t take not being afraid. It takes not letting your fear paralyze you.

Sara’s Beach

By Carrie Jacobson

It’s the start of school, and though our daughter is long grown, and school – even teaching school – is a distant memory for me, the academic cycle tugs at me, in a way that feels stronger than the seasons or the calendar year or the salty pull of the  moon.

As August rolls into September, I feel a deep yearning, a rich need to start something, or at the very least, to examine my path and test it, see if it needs adjusting or rejiggering, see if it needs an entirely fresh direction.

I want to shrug off silly, sunny, summer things and get serious. Start something that matters.

I remember the thrill of new clothes, and how shoes felt tight and hard after a long, barefoot summer. I remember the  smell of textbooks, and watching my mother make covers for them from brown paper grocery bags. I remember the promise that empty notebooks held, how delicious it was to start writing in them, how quickly my notes messed up that beautiful blankness. I remember the excitement of seeing old friends, and meeting new kids, and encountering different teachers and different subjects, and I remember the pure purpose of school. Its dedicated direction.

We were there to learn, and that was it. We had recess, and phys ed, but by and large, there were no after-school activities, no sports programs, no college-directed debate clubs or physics circles. We went to school, we read, we wrote, we studied math, we did art, and then we went home, and ran in the warm September days with all the other kids.

Our youngest grandchild began sixth grade today; my nieces and nephews started a variety of grades. One among them looked forward to school starting, the way I always did.  For the rest, emotions ran the gamut from apprehension to tolerance to downright balking.

And I feel sorry for them. For me, the start of school was the best time of the year, and I know how lucky I am to have learned to love the richness and the joy of learning.

By Carrie Jacobson

A week and a half ago, we had to euthanize our old Samoyed, Sam. We never really knew how old he was, but our daughter had adopted him 10 or 12 years ago, and when she couldn’t take him to her new home, we brought him in to live us. We figure he was 14 or 15, probably.

He was a sweet guy, calm and happy and large. He was also pretty much blind. We have another blind dog, and she makes her way through life so carefully that you’d never know she was blind.

Not Sam. He banged into things all the time. Once, while he was running at full tilt, he ran into a tree and knocked himself out – or at least, that’s what Peter believes happened. He – Peter – turned around, and Sam was flat on the ground. He came to fairly quickly, and seemed to be ok, but he’d been totally out.

He always adored our daughter. He was crazy about car rides. He loved food and cookies and treats of any kind. And he loved us.

The last few months, he couldn’t get up by himself. He became increasingly incontinent, and worse than everything, increasingly anxious. The back steps terrified him, and at the end, we were carrying him up and down. But he still loved food, and still wagged his tail when we petted him and talked to him.

We brought him to the vet, hoping for something that would help him. A pill, an idea, something to calm his awful anxiety. The vet looked at him and said that he was not in pain, but there was no hope. The kindest thing to do, she said, would be to euthanize him. He was not happy.

And so we did. I know the vet was right. I know Sam wasn’t happy. He was not the big, galumphing guy he’d delighted in being. I know the vet was right, and that if I had been Sam, I’d have begged to be let go. But I miss him with a grief that is deep and hard and sharp-edged, and I’d have given anything for death to have come, without intervention, and taken him away.

Pink Driveway

By Carrie Jacobson

Down here in the South, there’s a kind of tree called crape myrtle, which, according to my friend Pat, blooms for 100 days, starting in July. There are white crape myrtles, and lilac-colored ones, but most of them bloom in various shades of pink, and they are everywhere. They color the sky when you look up, and their petals gather on patios, and the edges of the roads, and in driveways, turning the ground pink. They are amazing, and I love them, and how they light up these hot summer days.