Gaspe Cowscape

I am very excited about the upcoming paintout in Montgomery! It is this Saturday, (Aug. 7), and it promises to be a lot of fun.

A paintout involves a group of artists making paintings in a specific period of time, and in a specific place. Someone honks a horn or rings a bell or sounds an alarm, and the painters begin. A couple hours later, everyone stops. Then, we frame the pieces and hand them over, and they are auctioned off. It’s fun for the painters, the buyers and the onlookers.

On Saturday, the painting starts at 9 a.m. and continues until noon, in the historic village of Montgomery. You can watch artists paint, and also see and buy already finished paintings we’ll be displaying near our easels. Framing takes place from noon until 2 p.m. The auction will be at 4 p.m., in the Senior Center in Veterans Park. You can preview the work from 3-4 p.m. Afterwards, there’s a party and reception at the Wallkill River School on Route 17K (Ward St.)

It’s sure to be a fun day, and it’s a benefit, too, for the Village of Montgomery Bicentennial. It’s a great chance to meet some of the people associated with the Wallkill River School, as well.

For more information, call the Wallkill River School at 845-457-2747.

Gaspe Cowscape is oil on canvas, 48×60. If you’d like information about price and delivery, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Sheepdog

On Saturday, I had the last of three back-to-back-to-back weekend art fairs. I’d worked on this fair, and it was scheduled long ago, so I was committed.

But that meant missing the opening reception of a show that is probably even nearer to my heart.

This is an exhibit of animal-themed works to benefit the Port Jervis/Deerpark Humane Society. It was put together by Susan Miiller, a wonderful painter and fellow Wallkill River School artist. The show is in the Port Jervis office of Dr. Jeffrey Parker, artist and podiatrist.

The show remains there (156 Pike St., Port Jervis) through Sept. 10. You can go see it! I don’t think he’s open every day, but you can call hims office at 845-856-7700 to find out his hours.

The paintings are by local artists, and also by artists who participate in one of my projects, the Art for Shelter Animals Project (artforshelteranimals.blogspot.com).

Artists who are involved with ASAP make portraits of animals in their local shelters or with local rescue groups, and then donate the art to the shelter or rescue group. The shelter or rescue group can do whatever it wants with the pieces. It can sell them, auction them, offer them as rewards for adopting pets or putting in volunteer hours. It can use the art to make the shelter a more pleasant place. Whatever the shelter wants to do with the pieces, it can do.

Before the artist hands the piece over, he or she sends an image of it to me, and I post it on the blog.

Artists from around the world participate in ASAP, and are participating in the Port Jervis exhibit! Painters from South Africa and England have sent pieces, as have artists from many places in the U.S.

So, thank you to Susan Miiller, and to Dr. Parker, and to everyone who has participated. I hope you all go to see the show! And if you can buy a painting, please do. The proceeds will help the animals in the Port Jervis/Deerpark shelter.

If you’re interested in joining the Art for Shelter Animals Project, check out the blog (artforshelteranimals.blogspot.com) or email me (carrieBjacobson@gmail.com) with questions. Also, if you’re interested in buying the sheepdog, or having me make a painting of your pet, please get in touch!

Azaleas

By Carrie Jacobson

This spring seems like a spring from my childhood. A real spring.

For decades now, it seems, spring has come in like a blast furnace. A few warmish days and then – WHAM! – a patch of August-like heat – and then, summer.

This spring, we’ve had the nice, cool nights, the long, warm afternoons, the very best of spring. And the land has responded, spilling over with blossoms and flowers and greenery.

It is all that I can do to look from the edges of my eyes at the news stories of the oil spume in the Gulf of Mexico. If I look too hard, or too directly, I see the end of the world in that disaster.

So I wrench my eyes away, and tear my heart back to the here and the now and the joys of what we have, while we still have it.

If you’re interested in this painting, email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com. If you like my work, check out my blog, The Accidental Artist, (link is on the Zest home page) or my website, jacobson-arts.com.

Pugster

By Carrie Jacobson

My stepdaughter – who, by now, is simply my daughter – was married on Saturday, to a lovely man named Jon. They are both well into their 30s, and this was the second marriage for both of them. The ceremony – a church service, with tuxedos and bridesmaids dresses and a full-length white gown with train –  included Erika’s daughter and young son, Jon’s mother and young daughter, and Peter and me. Erika had asked us both to walk down the aisle with her, and to give her away.

Erika dressed in the rectory. Then she and her maid of honor (daughter Samantha), bridesmaid Margaret, flower girl Jenna (Jon’s daughter) and I were to walk down Elm Street, and around the corner to the front doors of the church.

The day had been rainy and foggy and dark, but when we opened the doors of the rectory and stepped onto Elm Street – blocks from where Erika grew up – the sun edged out from behind the clouds.

In our pretty dresses, carrying our beautiful flowers, we walked the 50 yards from the one door to the other. Cars went by and honked their horns. Drivers waved and shouted “Good Luck,” and it felt like we were walking on rays of sun and promises and happiness and love – and indeed, we were.

To my utter astonishment, I burst into tears twice – once when the doors of the church opened, and Peter and I took Erika’s arms to walk her up the aisle, and again when Peter and Erika danced at the reception.

There is nothing like a marriage to make you understand – again and again – the power of  love, the beauty of commitment, and the healing that is possible inside a family.

If you want to commission me to make a painting of your pet, email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com, or call – 860-442-0246.

Going to be in Northampton, Mass., over Memorial Day weekend? Come to the Paradise City Art Festival, and visit me, in booth 318 in the Morgan Building. American Style magazine recently named this the third-best art fair in the country!

April Afternoon

By Carrie Jacobson

I love spring. I love the greening of the grass, the lengthening of the days. I love the crocuses and the birdsong and the sweet smells of hawthorne and honeysuckle. I love the way forsythias seem to trace bright yellow explosions, and the way lilacs drench the air with scent. Most of all, I think, I love azaleas.

They’re only beautiful for a week or two, I know – but for that week or two, there’s nothing better. I drive around a curve and suddenly, the world is pink, even scarlet, and that horizontal splash of color and light takes my breath away.

I’m not a real golf nut, though I do admit to enjoying watching the slow progress of that quiet game spill itself over huge stretches of green – but I love the Masters, because of the azaleas.

If you’d like to buy this painting, email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com, or call me at 860-442-0246 and we can discuss price and delivery options.

Maryland Hill Farm

By Carrie Jacobson

When we bought our house in Carroll County, Md., one of the innumerable papers we had to sign said that we understood that we were moving into a farming region, and that there would be farm smells, farm noises and farm equipment in the area.

That was 13 or 14 years ago, and enough has changed here that I wonder if buyers still have to sign that document.

The farms are not all gone, but roads that used to wind past farm after farm after farm now wind through a few farms and a bunch of developments.

Certainly, people need places to live. But does everyone need a new house? Does everyone need to live outside of the city where they work? In Baltimore, I saw beautiful but abandoned buildings everywhere. With a little money and a fair amount of work (or the opposite) these buildings could be reclaimed. Whole neighborhoods could be reclaimed. And while this would be a form of gentrification, there are enough empty buildings there to mean that the renewal need not ride in on the shoulders of displacement.

Here in the foothills of the Appalachians, here in these rolling hills, farmers still till the earth. But for how long?

If you’d like to buy this painting, email me at carriebjacobson@gmail.com

Gus

By Carrie Jacobson

I’ve made a number of these minimalist paintings of dogs and cats, and I have to say that I love them all, and this one in particular.

This is Gus, or Auguste Corleone Jacobson, my first dog as an adult. Before we knew about pet stores and puppy mills, before we understood about shelters and rescue groups, Peter and I went to a pet store and he bought Gus for me.

I’d never do that again – but I never regretted it, either. I loved Gus from the moment I saw him. He was as full of life and personality as any dog ever. We brought him home, and he raced around the house, faster and faster, barking at Najim, our Pekingese, and playing, and running and sliding on the floor, and then, all of a sudden, he collapsed, flopped right down, all four legs splayed, and dear God, I thought he was dead.

But no, that was just Gus.

He lived to be 16, and they were 16 fine years. He went fishing and camping and hiking with us in Idaho and Montana and Canada. He helped Najim recover from back surgery, finding a way to play that could engage Najim even during the weeks that he was paralyzed. When Najy was better, he and Gus would fight, on occasion, with a fury of barking and snarling and gnashing of teeth, and never any bloodshed or actual biting. Well, Peter and I were bitten a couple of times, wresting the tiny titans apart.

In Maine, the boys got to peeing around the house, marking territory, so we put them in crates when we couldn’t watch them. The crates were side by side, and after a while we realized that they were peeing on each other through the sides of the crates. Nice.

I still miss Gus. He loved to snuggle, loved to ride in the car, loved to go places and meet people. Our rescue bichon, Woodreau, is terrified of everything. He doesn’t like any of that stuff. But he is a nice little dog, and I love him dearly, and he desperately needed to be rescued.

But he is no Gus. And really, truly, he shouldn’t be.