Joy for Weary Hours
Oil on canvas, 12×24
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By Carrie Jacobson

Though we didn’t have a garden this year – a first in recent memory – the joys of the summer garden haven’t passed me by.

I’ve savored strawberries still warm from the sun, and sweet, thin-skinned cucumbers from my friend Pat’s garden.

I’ve served up squash and asparagus from Dulcie’s garden, so fresh you could nearly taste the breeze in them.

I’ve breathed the rich spice of roses, the heavy weight of gardenias, the soft powdery scent of camellias. I’ve smiled at the swaths of black-eyed susans that seem to be everywhere this year, and marveled at the showy frills of irises and lilies.

I’ve missed having my own gardens. But there’s always next year.

The title of this painting – my own little substitute garden – is the final stanza of a verrryyy long poem,  “The Poor Man’s Garden,”  by Mary Howitt:

Sauer Farm
Oil on canvas, 10×10

By Carrie Jacobson

As August burns into September and the sunsets come earlier, I know that this year, for once, I have lived the length of these summer days. I’ve romped and painted and squinted and sweated in July’s hot afternoons, and spent the long, soft twilights out of doors.

I’ve watched the summer sun rise over nights that never cooled, and I’ve stood in cold rain as storms blew in and out, and steam rose from day-baked sidewalks.

This summer, I watched as the geese flew north, and the bluebirds came, and the hummingbirds and butterflies showed up with the flowers. I smelled sweet gardenias blooming, smiled at swaths of black-eyed susans, and marveled at fields of sunflowers. I swam in the ocean, cooled in lakes, strode into clear, cold streams.

The summer’s heat warmed my bones, drained me of sweat, exhausted me more days than I could count, and left me knowing that I had lived every day fully, as fully as the sun had drenched these long, hot months.

I celebrate this summer and my participation, and welcome the cool nights and, soon, the bright spice of autumn.

Chance
Oil on canvas, 12×12

By Carrie Jacobson

I donate art to charitable causes on a regular basis, and at the Paradise City show in Northampton, Mass in the spring, the winners of a pet portrait were the mothers of a young woman whose beloved dog Chance had died earlier that day.

Their story made me cry, and through the photos they sent me, I could tell what a great dog Chance had been.

I made the painting, and we agreed to meet at a show in Old Saybrook, Conn. in late July.

The day came, and one of the mothers stopped by my booth early to make sure we were on track. I put the painting up right over my little desk, and below it, put “To Carly, Love, Chance,” on a postcard.

Soon enough, they all showed up. The daughter walked by my tent and turned to look. She saw the painting and stopped in her tracks.

“Oh my God,” she said, “That looks like Chance.”

Her hand went up over her mouth when she realized that indeed, it was Chance. She started crying, the mothers started crying, her grandmother started crying, I started crying – and then we all were laughing, hugging, crying, and remembering the dear dog who had meant so much to Carly.

To see the series of photos showing all of this, click here to get to my own blog, The Accidental Artist. 

Hay Bales

By Carrie Jacobson

When we left the mid-Hudson Valley six years ago, it was not a happy departure. My mother had died, my boss Mike Levine had died, my job at the Times Herald-Record had been eliminated, and we lived in a house where flooding endangered our lives.

I hadn’t realized, until today, that my memories and thoughts of the mid-Hudson were tinged and darkened by these experiences.

On the drive from Saugerties to Middletown, I found myself awed, at nearly every curve, by the incredible beauty and glory of the area. This must be the greenest time of the year, and the cool morning and soft light highlighted the depth and variety of the colors.

The road wound beside clear streams, past fields thick with corn, by farms with beautiful buildings showing the care of families over decades, over centuries. And behind it all, the mountains rose, tall and blue and strong.

I’d forgotten what a place the mid-Hudson Valley is, what beauty it holds, what history it whispers, what promises it makes. Today, I remembered it all.

The Purple House

By Carrie Jacobson

Safe at Anchor
Oil on canvas, 12×48

By Carrie Jacobson

Neighbors

By Carrie Jacobson

Land of the free, home of the brave.

Sometimes, I get really frustrated with America. I want this to be a better place, more like what it could be. More like what it should be.

Peter and I talk sometimes about moving to Canada, but we always end up remembering how cold it is there.

And so we stay here, and when I am not sulking that I don’t already have government-sponsored health care, that Fox News exists at all, and that the roads around Norfolk are about as good as in a third-world country, I do rejoice.

Government-run health care, for better or worse, is on its way. While I don’t agree with Fox News, I do relish its right to exist. And if the roads around Norfolk are in terrible shape, it’s because the people of Norfolk have voted on tax issues that result in those roads.

I rejoice, most of all, in the fact that I have had the freedom to leave my steady job and take up life as an artist. And that as an artist, I have the freedom to make new kinds of paintings – like the one above – to experiment, to try, and to fail or succeed, with all that each possibility entails.

Today, with all the bravery and confidence I have, I shall celebrate every inch of my freedom, and cheer a silent – or maybe not so silent – cheer for all that is good about America.

African Gray Parrot

By Carrie Jacobson

So how DOES one paint a parrot? Well, after dancing around the question for a long time, and being scared about trying, I finally just dove in, deciding to paint a parrot the way I paint everything else.

And this brings up an interesting question: Is it harder to paint some things than others? An artist I respect greatly told me that it was just nonsense to think that way. If you can paint a dog, she said, you can paint anything.

I am not so sure. I can paint a dog, but I can’t really paint, say, a Victorian mansion – at least not in any way that looks – to my eyes – like a Victorian mansion, with all that makes it Victorian and lovely.

The issue, at least to me, is one of detail and complexity, and my skill and interest in those aspects of painting. I’m just not interested in finding and taking on the most complicated thing I can paint. To a large degree, I’m interested in finding and taking on the most simple.

In my paintings, I am forever editing things out – windows, porches, chimneys, trees, bushes, telephone poles, collars, backgrounds, roads. I try to paint the simplest part of what is. The core of the thing, not the fancy edges.

Once, I tried to paint a falling-down mill building along a river in Rhode Island. I’d known the building when it was more or less whole, but by the time I painted it, the roof had fallen in, and parts of the building had disintegrated. My painting, to my eyes, was a failure. I painted what I saw – but what I had loved about the building, what had attracted me to it all those years ago, was its wholeness, its proud and simple stance at the very edge of the river. And that was no longer there.

So for me, I guess, at least now, I seek the iconic, the unchanging, the core. And in that regard, painting a parrot is much like painting a dog.

Jilly!
Oil on canvas, 12×12, commission

By Carrie Jacobson