Little Italy

By Carrie Jacobson

Everyone is busy, busy, busy! So I’ve come up with some ways to save time and energy.

1. Make insomnia your friend. If you wake up in the middle of the night, forget about going back to sleep. Just start working.

2. Sleep in your clothes. If you’re not married, or if you don’t really care, keep your shoes on, too.

3. Eat soft food. Cutting stuff up takes time!

4. Don’t listen to the radio. It takes too much psychic energy!

5. Never answer the phone for anything but a true emergency. Return calls only when you know the person won’t be there, and leave a message on voice mail.

6. Wear nothing with buttons or zippers. Pull on, pull off.

7. If you’re really pressed for time, shave your head. Imagine the hours you’ll save in the shower before your hair grows back!

This 4-inch by 4-inch painting is sold, but I have other miniatures (fast to paint!). To see more, check my blog, carriejacobson.blogspot.com

Rusty Refrigerator

I was in Cape Breton Island this summer, painting with a friend, when we encountered these cows on a breathtakingly beautiful road near Mabou.

We visited (thankfully briefly) with the man who owned them. On the rusty door of his rusty refrigerator, in his disturbingly unkempt home, were photos of crop circles he’d mowed into this very field, and thus the incongruent name of the painting.

It’s 30 by 40, and is thick with paint and surface texture. If you’re interested in hearing details of price and shipping or delivery, please send me an email at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Aja

This is the other painting I made at the Deerpark Family Fun Day a couple weeks ago. Aja is in the Port Jervis/Deerpark Humane Society shelter, and she is up for adoption. She’s a sweet dog, with the most hopeful expression on her face. Maybe you’d like to adopt her? If you do, I bet you could get this painting to go with her… Here’s the shelter’s web address: http://www.pjhumane.org/

There’s something about a shelter animal that pulls at the heart, even more than other animals do. It has always seemed to me that the shelter animals remember, and know that they’re better off, and treasure the change that you have made in their lives.

Of course, they come with their issues – but who doesn’t?

If you have room in your home or in your heart for a shelter animal, go out and get one. You will find love and company and, chances are, a true heart.

If you would like me to paint a portrait of your pet (Christmas is coming! Hanukkah is coming!), send me an email at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Frack

On Saturday, I painted in the art tent at the Deerpark Family Festival.

It was a beautiful day, and Deerpark residents made a good showing. I saw old friends and neighbors, met new friends, saw beautiful art, listened to music (even danced a little, with a woman who spent her afternoon kicking up her heels), and I had a great time.

I made two paintings to donate to the Port Jervis/Deerpark Humane Society. Frick, above, is one of them. The other, you will see next week. You can see them both in person, if you visit the Humane Society’s tent next Sunday at the Fall Foliage Festival in downtown Port Jervis.

The donations are part of the Art for Shelter Animals Project, a group I co-founded and continue to run. You can check out our blog at artforshelteranimals.blogspot.com.

Here’s how it works: You make a portrait of an animal in your local shelter or with a local rescue group, and then donate the art to the shelter or rescue group. Before you give it to them, you take a photo and send it to me, and I will upload it to the blog and write a little about you, and a little about the recipient group.

The shelter or rescue group can do whatever it wants with the art. They can sell it, auction it, reprint it on tote bags (this idea came from a young shelter worker, Michaela, who befriended me on Saturday), give it as an inducement for adoption, or for volunteer work – or they can just use the art to make their shelter more attractive. What they do with it is up to them.

In the summer, Susan Miiller, an artist who lives in Deerpark, engineered a small-works animal show in a doctor’s office in Port. Art for Shelter Animals Project painters from around the world sent pieces to be in the show. If they sold, the entire price went to the shelter. If they didn’t sell, the pieces went to the shelter.

My paintings on Sunday were really part of that show.

I love our home here in Connecticut. I love being near my family. I love not living beside a river with a temper (we lived on the banks of the Neversink in Meyers Grove). But I loved living in Orange County, too, and I miss it. Painting in the festival, visiting my old neighbors and neighborhood, and seeing again – and with fresh eyes – the beauty of the region made me miss my old home even more.

But life takes you where it takes you. And that’s OK with me.

Autumn Sky

I look up from the kitchen table when I hear the whir of a hummingbird outside the screen door. He’s hanging there, looking in, or watching me, or  looking at his reflection in the glass beside the door.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s saying goodbye.

Last summer, Peter told me he was sitting at his desk when a hummingbird came up to the office window – something they never do – and hung in the air, looking him full in the face, then zoomed off. That was the last he saw of the hummers last year. It was Sept. 15.

The hummingbirds amused us all summer, darting and fighting and zooming around the deck. Now they’re moving south. The bluebirds are long gone, the robins, too. Most of the goldfinches have left, though some will spend the winter. In the gardens, the weeds have won at last, and here and there, trees are turning red and gold. Summer is slipping off, into the cool mornings and the cool evenings.

On the beach a few days ago, fall rolled in on dark clouds and darker water, and the sweet, short sun of a September day. Seagulls turned and whirled and dove for fish, and the beach was empty, the summer crowds gone home, and peace come in their wake.

Today is Sept. 12, my mother’s birthday. Autumn was her favorite time of year, and she would have loved this one, with its brilliant skies and its golden days and its bright, happy promises.

If you’d like to buy this painting, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information

Buttons

Little Buttons here was at one end of the leash, and Wanda, his owner, was at the other, when I met them, in Margaree Forks on Cape Breton Island this summer.

A painting friend and I toured the Atlantic provinces for three weeks, exploring, seeing, ooohing and aahing, and mostly, painting – and laughing, too. We met Buttons at a point of hilarity that was pretty much unrivaled through the trip.

We were trying to be frugal, and so, while we did stay in hotels, we tried to eat food from grocery stores instead of restaurants.  But this night, in the urban mecca of Margaree Forks, we arrived moments after the grocery store closed.

There were no restaurants in town, and we were hungry.

The owner of the hotel, a not-so-ebullient German named Werner, grouchily informed us – after arguing with us that the grocery store was open (we’d seen the last one out lock the door) – that if we drove to Northeast Margaree, we would find a gas station where we could get a couple slices of pizza.

Werner made it sound like Northeast Margaree was just to the northeast of Margaree Forks. Well, it was, but about 30 miles to the northeast.

We got to the gas station… and the pizza was gone for the day. So we got ice cream instead. But by the time we got back to the hotel, we were hungry again.

In the cooler, we had bread, cheese and CheezWiz … and so we had cheese-and-CheezWiz sandwiches.

For some reason, this struck us as absolutely hilarious, and while we were eating our delicious meal and laughing about it, we looked up and saw the cutest little dog ever. It was Buttons, and he and Wanda had heard us laughing (well, all of Margaree Forks had probably heard us, as we’d left the door to the room open). Wanda took pity on us, left Buttons with us for a while (OK, I admit it, I begged her to leave him), went back to her room and returned with muffins for us.

We talked and laughed, and hugged Buttons, and had muffins for dessert, after our gourmet meal. It was a fun evening indeed.

If you’d like me to make a portrait of your pet, send me an email at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Sawmill Pond

Yes, it’s a million degrees today, but even so, the nights are longer and cooler, and in the heat of the day, you can see the changes in the landscape. The greens have grown dusty and rich, the thin yellow edge of spring fading, dissipating. Here and there are sprigs and lines of reds and oranges, the first licks of early autumn.

Over the course of the summer, I tutored a neighbor girl in painting. Yesterday, we stood in the hot trailing edge of summer and painted this pond and its fall-edged foliage. I’ve enjoyed painting with her. At 14, she is gifted at painting, among other things. But it’s been hard to get her to step out of doing what she does well.

It’s always scary, leaving what you know for what you don’t. But I think that if you have even just a kernel of faith, you will be led safely down the new path. I urged my young friend on, and watched her hesitate, admit that she was scared, take the first halting step, then the second, then the third. By the fourth, she was smiling. And though she didn’t finish her painting, she knows the way – and it’s no longer so frightening.

If you’re interested in buying this painting, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and shipping/delivery information.

Give Me That Ball!

There are days, aren’t there, when the company of dogs is preferable to the company of humans? Or to put it another way,  that there are days when the company of humans is preferable to the company of dogs.

This long, hot stretch of a summer has been tough on our oldest girl. She’s a chow-German shepherd (not the dog in this painting, who is a bearded collie from the local dog park), and she’s 14. Her muzzle has grayed, and her legs are stiff. She sleeps a lot. But her eyes, behind a bluish, cataracty film,  are bright and interested. She greets me with a smile and a sparkle, and even, sometimes, a sprightly trot across the yard.

The glory days are behind her now, but we both remember. We remember how she ran across the fields, strong and fleet and tireless. We remember how she chased deer, and how she roared and snarled at strangers, protecting me from all danger. We remember how she leapt, how she plowed through snowstorms and rolled in drifts, and shook off the cold as though it were nothing. She dreams these memories today; I hear her nails clicking against the floor as she runs and races in her sleep, young again and fierce and proud.

If you are interested in buying this painting, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

She follows me these days, with her eyes and with her body, too. Follows me and looks, sometimes, deep into me, into my eyes, into my heart, as if I have the answer for why she can no longer hear, no longer run. I can’t run, either, I tell her. But I can walk, and you can walk, and we can walk together. And I can love, and you can love, and that will never end.

Fat Guy at the Diner

On a recent, sweltering morning, we were going in to eat at the diner in this painting, when I saw a car parked with a dog in it.

The windows were cracked open, but the car was in the direct sun. It was already 86 degrees and getting hotter by the second.

“Who owns the car with the dog in it?” I asked, loudly, when I got into the diner.

“We do,” a man said. “And he’s all right.”

“No,” I said, “he’s not. And if he is now, he won’t be in about 10 minutes.”

“He’s all right,” the man said, “and it’s none of your business.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s everyone’s business. That dog is going to get sick or die if you don’t get him out of there.”

“You want to take him for a walk?” the man said. “Take him for a walk then.”

“No, I don’t want to take him for a walk. I want you to move the car.”

“He’s my damn dog, and he’s fine,” the guy said. His wife and young daughter said nothing. The three had clearly just arrived, and were studying the menus. It would be a long time before that dog was safe.

By this time, we were seated, and I was crying. I hate this, but it happens to me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“I’m going to call the police,” I said to Peter.

The guy overheard. “You want to call the police, call the damn police.”

“Fine,” I said, “I will.” I turned to Peter. “Let’s go,” I said. “I can’t stand to be here and watch this.”

I called the police, and we left.  I wish I had done more. I wish I’d stayed until the cops came. I wish I had taken the poor dog for a walk. But at least I did something.

“Fat Guy at the Diner” is oil on canvas, 24 inches by 36 inches. If you’re interested in buying it, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Sunny Saturday

On Saturday, artists from the Wallkill River School took to the historic streets of Montgomery and painted. We started early in the morning, and finished at noon. Then we framed our wet paintings and put them up on easels in the Montgomery Senior Center.

A few hours later, the paintings were up for bid at a wet-paint auction.

What fun this day was! I challenged myself with this painting, a long downhill perspective on a skinny canvas (10 inches by 30 inches). I fought and struggled, painted and repainted, and when it finally fell into place, I was delighted, and my onlookers were, too.

That’s one thing about painting in public – you’re out there on display, and every stroke, good or bad, is made with people looking on.

At first, it scared me. I make a lot of strokes that I change. I scrape paint off, I push it around, I cover it up. I am an active, intuitive painter. Sometimes I wish I were more thoughtful, more measured, more precise – but I yam what I yam.

I made two paintings on Saturday morning. This was the first; the second was a little hurried, a little time-crunched. Both paintings sold at the auction, which made me happy, indeed. Most of the money went to the Village of Montgomery Bicentennial, and that seems like a good cause.

I met a few Zest readers while I was out on the sunny sidewalk, and that was a real treat! Thank you all for stopping by and introducing yourselves.