Morning, Essex Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

I traveled to Gloucester, MA,  this week for a painting retreat. I woke early on Saturday, the last day in Gloucester, and made this painting. A new friend, Alicia Drakiotes, painted with me, and we enjoyed the beautiful morning and each other’s paintings.

Tired, filled with beauty and with painting, I headed home.

And once I walked in the door, I knew that my old girl’s time had come.

With distance, with fresh eyes and with a heart full of love and sorrow, I saw that it was the end for Kaja, and that I had to make it happen. I walked into the house, saw her, burst into tears and called the vet.

Three hours later, she was gone.

I am sad beyond words. I am bereft. Kaja was smart, and she was noble, and she had a sense of humor. She was one of the great ones. She was nearly 15, and she guarded me, and loved me and cared for me unfailingly, every day of those 15 years.

I only wish that death had come and taken her here, in her sleep, in the home she loved. But her heart was too big and too strong for that.

This dog, who had run across the fields chasing deer, this dog who had hiked and ridden and gone swimming with me, this dog who had been the friend of my heart day in and day out, could barely walk. She could barely stand, or sleep or eat. She looked at me and I saw sadness in her eyes. I saw the end.

Her big heart touches mine still, and always will. And while I miss her, and will miss her every day for the rest of my life, I know that she is free from pain and from anxiety and from the body that let her down.

Old Mystic Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

On Saturday, I went painting with a friend at Old Mystic. It was Mike’s first time painting with anyone, and for me, around here at least, it was a pretty rare experience.

Jill Blanchette and I painted together one memorable day. I painted last summer with Megan, who took lessons from me, and was a delightful companion. Heather MacLeod and I painted our way through Atlantic Canada together, a journey I will never forget.

When we lived in New York, I painted regularly with my friends at the Wallkill River School. I miss them every day.

It is an oddly solitary life I lead these days. No more working in the newsroom. No more painting with the plein-air group. These days, Peter and I work at home. He is my office mate, though he’s in one room and I’m in the other.

I go to Montville, the town I cover for Patch.com. I go to meetings, I do see other people, but it’s different. It is a quiet life here, and a good one. But different.

All of which goes a long way toward saying that it was fun to paint with Mike and thrilling, as always, to see the magic of what happens when two painters paint side by side.

My painting on the left, Mike's on the right - How Different!

Cape Cod Morning

By Carrie Jacobson

Where have I been the past couple weeks? Apparently I’ve been in some other time zone, some time zone in my head, where the passing of days is meaningless – even though it continues to happen.

As the days have traveled by, I have looked up and realized that yes, I’ve forgotten to post to Zest. And forgotten a slew of other things as well.

This week where I live, sunrise is at the earliest it will be for the entire summer. Sunset will continue to grow later, but the truth of the matter is that we are in that stretch, that sweet stretch, where the days arc out broadly, and dawns and dusks are as slow and gentle as they will be all year.

This time, though I am cold as winter on these 50-degree mornings, I am aware. This year, for the first time in ages, through the fog of the passing days and the missed appointments and the forgotten meetings, I am stretching out along these golden days, and savoring their length and light and fragile dawns and dusks.

Training sheepdogs

By Carrie Jacobson

I was trolling around the backroads between Fryeburg, Maine, and North Conway, NH, a couple of weeks ago, when I came upon a small group of people, a small group of dogs and a harried-looking clutch of sheep.

It was a sheepdog clinic. The canines were young and inexperienced, and a stocky farmer guy was training dogs and owners alike.

It was pretty fascinating. For the most part, the dogs clearly have the chasing gene – but have to learn the commands. One of the dogs was reluctant to chase, and the farmer guy dragged him over near the sheep and exhorted him, and he took off, as speedy and determined as any of them. My guess is that that dog’s been yelled at for chasing…

The rest, though, got gleams in their eyes right away, as they went after the poor, overchased sheep. It was great fun to watch, and I’d have stayed all day, were I not supposed to be at a wedding.

It’s such a miracle when any of us, humans or animals, finds his true purpose in life. I can tell you from experience that it feels like nothing else. The whole world seems to open up and shine with life, and possibilities seem endless.

If you’re looking for a fun Memorial Day weekend outing, why not try the Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, Mass.? It’s not such a long drive, but it is a gorgeous one. And the show is fabulous! Jaw-droppingly lovely high-end craft and beautiful paintings, too. I’ll be there, in the Morgan Barn, Booth 317. Please come and say hi.

Interested in buying this painting? Please contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Museum Village

By Carrie Jacobson

I saw old friends these past two weekends, and my heart rejoiced.

I traveled both weekends, and visited with people who have mattered in my life, changed my life, and will always be dear to my heart.

My mother never made it to the Internet, but friends of hers would print out things from the net and give them to her. One she treasured was a little word poem, about friends.

They come into your life for a reason, this piece of writing goes. They might be friends for a season, or a year, or a lifetime – the point is to treasure the friendship for as long as it lasts, and to understand that the friends who come and go are not friends you have lost, but are friends who came into your life to affect it.

My mother loved this thing. I think it gave her an out. I think it made it OK for her to see friends come and go, and it absolved her from feeling that a friend who was no longer a friend meant failure.

Like my mother, I am a person who holds on. Even when my life moves away from my friends’ lives, they live in my heart. I think of them, I remember them, I treasure gifts they gave me, memories we made together, words they said – and now, paintings they made.

So, seeing my old friends these past weekends has left me happy. It filled a place that was not empty, but needed something. It needed renewal, it needed freshening. It needed new memories.

If you’re interested in this painting, please contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com.

Harpswell Sunset

By Carrie Jacobson

This weekend, the plan was for me to be off Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Heather, the wonderful woman who went to Canada with me, was getting married in Maine, at the Fryeburg Fairgrounds, on Saturday, and I was invited.

Another friend in Maine wanted to see paintings, with the thought of possibly buying one.

And I needed a break. I needed a break more than any time I can think of in the past 20 years.

Since September, I’ve been working steadily. Many weeks, I’ve worked upwards of 100 hours. Every week, I’ve worked six or seven days. I’m tired. Mushy-headed. Dull.

On Friday, I was up at 3:30, writing a story from a meeting the night before. It took me until 9 to get everything done. But then it was done.

I readied my paintings to be shown. I packed them into the van. I packed my painting supplies, I packed clothes, I packed my computer. I left the house, got the oil changed, went to the bank and then finally, lusciously, exuberantly, I was free!

Five hours later, I reached the house of my friend who wanted to see paintings.

No one was home.

I nearly left, but hung around long enough that her husband and kids showed up. My friend was in New Hampshire, helping a friend of hers who has cancer.

So I left my paintings and went out to paint.

I found this scene at the very end of Harpswell, on a finger of an arm of land that sticks out into the Atlantic. I painted FAST, I painted wild, I painted before the light faded, and the God-rays vanished, and  darkness surrounded me.

I felt as free and as happy and as utterly connected as I ever have.

How I miss that feeling!

Sometimes it seems that my life has been turned upside down. That what I should be doing is taking a backseat to what I must be doing.

But I plow through, full of energy, full of optimism, full of hope.

Meantime, if you know anyone who is looking to be a patron for an exuberant, promising artist, please send him or her my way.

Interested in this painting? Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery options.

Lavender Farm

By Carrie Jacobson

Last weekend, I thought our oldest dog was at the end. We took her to the vet on Monday to see if anything could be done for her, and I was expecting to come home without her.

She is nearly 15, a chow-German shepherd (as far as we know), and as I’ve written here before, has been creaky for a while.

Last week, her night-time pacing and doggie dementia combined to make exhausting and terrifying situations for her and us. For instance, one morning, her panting woke me, and I found her stuck halfway through a small end table that, trying to escape, she had dragged to the middle of the kitchen.

It would be funny, and I am sure that in future years it will, if it were not so unhappy and dangerous for her. By the time I got her out, she was so whipped she could barely walk.

But our miracle-worker of a vet, who himself has a 15-year-old dog, didn’t say, “she’s clearly too decrepit to keep living.” Instead, he said he had ideas, and encouraged us to try them.

We made a recipe of beef and rice and veggies for her. Started giving her benadryl to get her to sleep at night. Put her on doxycycline and prednisone. Got a bottle of something called Sunilite, which helps not only with doggie dementia, but also with the odd flipping of night and day that many old dogs experience. We’re giving her vitamins, keeping up on the milk thistle, bitter cherry and fish oil. We’re going to try her on melatonin. And we got her a collar that has a naturopathic something in it that is supposed to help calm her – and it seems to be working.

Against all odds, she’s better. She’s still ancient, but she is stronger and happier and clearly more herself.

I know it’s a matter of days or weeks at the most, probably. But if she can be happy and not panicked, and not exhausting herself by pacing around, then those days or weeks are going to be good for all of us.

This painting is 16×20 on gallery-wrapped canvas. If you are interested, please contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information.

Reservoir Morning

By Carrie Jacobson

Winter spins here into spring, picking up the old dead leaves and whirling them into the woods, releasing the plants and greenery beneath. Primroses poke up early, immune to frost and pounding rain and the late, bad-surprise snows. This winter took its toll on year-old forsythia, grocery-store azaleas, and the roses that ended up beneath the snowplow’s piles, but all seem to be scrabbling back into some form of life.

At dawn, the air resounds with the songs of hundreds of birds returning to their summer trees. Flickas peck at fallen seeds, goldfinches flit and glitter on the thistle, and blue jays scream at each return of the red-tailed hawks to their nest beside the driveway.

Along the reservoir, the early mornings are sometimes softened by fog, and wisps of clouds, and sea-smoke rising from the night-cool water. And on these past few evenings, the April moon has risen huge and close and brilliant in the coming cool of night.

We never know how many springs remain, and so I remind myself to stop in these too-busy days, and smell the air, feel the soft earth, listen as this longed-for spring unfolds.

This painting is oil on canvas, 16×20. If you’re interested in price and delivery details, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Jamestown Afternoon

By Carrie Jacobson

For better or worse, and believe me, it’s both, Peter and I have seven dogs, all rescues, all with issues, many in varying stages of decrepitude.

We’ve had a spate lately of accidents that, while horrifying at first, have ended up with no injuries but have left me wondering just what the heck we’ve gotten ourselves into here.

One of the dogs, Zoe, is just plain blind and now nearly deaf, too. But she is a Lhasa apso, quick on the draw and aggressively protective.

Another of the dogs, Kaja – a German shepherd/chow mix – is about 14, shaky and arthritic, stone deaf, half-blind and increasingly unwilling to watch where she’s going. She’s decided she is going to walk wherever she wants to walk, and if there’s a bad-tempered Lhasa apso in the way, so what.

Kaja steps on Zoe, who jumps up snarling, but of course, Kaja is completely deaf, and the alpha dog to boot, so the little one might just as well be a flea, or less, far as she’s concerned.

Lately, Kaja has taken to walking into the water bowl and knocking it over, oh, two or three times a day. Our kitchen floor has never been cleaner.

She has figured out that we will give her pretty much anything that she wants, now, so she will turn her nose up at regular dog food and wait until we give her the good stuff (canned food) or better yet, pieces of our own meals.

And you know what? At 14, she deserves whatever tastes good to her, that’s what I think.

The bad-tempered Pekingese, now 14 himself and pretty much deaf, growls and snarls for the heck of it, also aiming much of his ill temper at Kaja, who I believe goes out of her way to step on him.

The ancient Samoyed, 98 percent blind and the sweetest dog in the world, crashed down a short set of steps this morning into the basement, where no dog has ever been. He is fine, but the big lummox was trembling like a leaf in my arms.

His sworn enemy, a bichon with neuroses and deep-seated and inexplicable hatred of the Samoyed, stood at the top of the steps and barked nastily as I hauled the Samoyed up.

So we go on, our aged and aging dogs growing more and more dear, as they accompany us into the latter part of our lives. Sometimes I am sad beyond words at all of us. Sometimes their crashes and bickering, their bad tempers and refusals, just make me laugh, and make me glad to be alive.

All of which has nothing to do with this painting, but is something I was thinking about this Sunday morning.

What about you? Are your pets helping you deal with the passing of the years?

This painting is oil on canvas, 16×20. If you want price or delivery information, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

The Fog Is Rising

By Carrie Jacobson

It seems to me that there was more fog when I was growing up. Sure there was, figuratively – but I mean really and truly in the weather sense of things.

Maybe that’s just my admittedly foggy memory – but now, it seems there’s fog only on rare autumn mornings, when the fog is over the rivers, the night’s cool dreams meeting the morning’s promise of heat.

When I was a kid, we had whole days of fog. Whole weeks, it seems, even. The fog would roll in off the water and blanket the area, and it was a regular thing, as regular as sunny mornings or rainy ones.

I remember living in Idaho and longing for the fog. Longing for days of rain, too. Longing for those gray New England stretches that of course, as a kid, I couldn’t stand. Spend a year in a place where it’s always sunny, and you’d be surprised what weather you’d yearn for.

At any rate, I had a great time making this painting. I feel like I’ve been freed – and I didn’t even know I was locked up.

Interested in this painting? It is oil on canvas, 36×48. Please contact me for price and delivery information: carrieBjacobson@gmail.com