Sunrise, Tuesday

By Carrie Jacobson

The sun is just up, and I’m facing a big day. A day with chores and duties and a lot of challenges – probably more than I can handle, and I know it, even this early.

It’s exciting, yes, and it is daunting, and as I close the laptop, I’m already thinking ahead, planning Chore No. 1 – gathering all six dogs, letting them out, herding them and shushing them in this early morning quiet.

I open the door of my boat-garage studio and head down, start toward the house. I am concentrating. Focusing. Planning.

And then the light catches my eye, and I look up – and everything changes. The chores recede. The challenges shrink. What must be done, what should be done, what demands attention, all that can wait. In this moment, there is nothing more than the clouds and the sun and the joy of being alive in a place like this, and in a life like this.

This little painting is a celebration of the simple beauty of the world, and a reminder to enjoy it.

Chores can always wait.

On Marlin Road

By Carrie Jacobson

A musing this morning as I look at this painting:

Where is greatness? What is the difference between mediocre and superb? Between success and getting by?

Is it a touch of salt, a dash of color, a stroke of genius – or is it just luck?

I’ve read that greatness always comes from discipline, and I am starting to believe it. Greatness is waiting there for all of us, at the intersection of chance and hard work. It will come to us, maybe in flashes, maybe in spans, but it will come – when the muscle we’ve been training does what it needs to do.

Greatness will come when the magic of inspiration meets the boundaries of skill, and each enriches the other.

Why is this painting so clearly better than that one? Both are done by the same hand, with the same colors, even sometimes on the same day… and yet, one soars and the other simply looks pretty.

It is one blur of green, twisting into the sky, one bit of color there by chance or by design – or there because, through hard work and constant striving, my hand and my eye knew it had to be there – even if my brain didn’t.

There is magic, yes. The muses sing, yes. But more and more, I believe, disciplined work is at the core of every success.

September Salt Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

If my mother — Mary Ann Hook Cooper — were alive, this would have been her 85th birthday.

She’s been gone for six years now, but she’s with me, every day, every minute. She’s in the blood that runs through me. She’s in my long upper lip and my bad right foot. She’s in my taste for peanut butter, and she’s in my outlook and my optimism. My mother is in my love of color, my sense of adventure and my delight in laughter.

And she’s in my paintings. She is in the courage that it takes to start, and the tenacity it takes to keep going when – inevitably, in every painting – it looks like disaster is looming. She is in my love of the landscape and the creatures in it, in my love of color and movement and sense and sensation.

She is at my heart and in my soul, and she is in the heart and the soul of every painting I make.

Today, Mom, I miss you as I miss you every day. But today, more than anything, I celebrate you, and the beautiful, strong life you lived and which you shared with me.

Canton Sunflower Farm

This life offers some odd interactions.

I am painting on a recent morning, on the side of Route 44 in Canton (pronounced the Ohio way, not the China way), when a red truck pulls up.

The door opens, and out steps an old guy wearing a T-shirt and a sort of strange hat. He looks to be in his 80s.

He comes over to me, and peers around the easel.

He stares at the painting for a moment, then turns to me.

“Do you ever paint regular?” he asks.

***

This whole interchange got me thinking. What is regular for me is just not regular for everyone else – and vice versa.

It’s interesting to see painters at any show, side by each, selling their work. Interesting to see the approach, the technique, the framing – and the variety (or lack of variety) that each show’s jury selects.

At my most recent show, there was one abstract multimedia guy who made very long skinny pieces, like 36 inches by 4 inches. There was my friend Ronet Noe, who makes fabulous, colorful, whimsical paintings that often have areas of papier mache that are raised from the canvas. There was a guy who paints nautical scenes so gorgeous and so detailed that I wondered whether they were photographs (he was mean to me when I asked). And another guy who paints finely detailed but not completely realistic scenes. And then there was me.

There’s no measuring one against the other. No judging. It’s just interesting to see the variety. And I am always glad to be included, regular or not.

***

So what does the old guy mean?

He wants someone to paint a scene on a saw.

Guess it won’t be me.

Charlotte

By Carrie Jacobson

The Berkshires Arts Festival show, in Great Barrington, MA, was a total financial bust for me. Over three loooong days of the show, not one painting sold. Not One. Ouch.

But I met some delightful people, including jeweler Cynthia Battista, who makes fascinating pieces in different kinds of metal and stone (click here to check out her work at OldstoneStudio.net); printmaker Leslie Peebles, who makes fantastical prints of nature and animals (click here to check out lesliepeebles.com); and James Takaki, who makes metal garden ornaments in his Iron Arts studio in Vermont (click here to check out Ironartstudio.com). Click here for a video of James talking about what he did with a big bag of money he earned at a show in Montana.

And I got some insights, too. James thinks that shows like this one, outside of urban centers, are just on the skids. Cynthia characterized the (very few) people who came to this show as “Martha Stewart” types, who are clearly not looking for my rough, vivid paintings or her unique, strong pieces. Peter says it’s his theory that, at least in New England, the farther the show is from the coast, the less chance I have of selling.

I don’t have theories yet. I am listening, and watching, and thinking. Do you have a theory? I’d love to hear it!

Burton's Shore

By Carrie Jacobson

One of the reasons, I think, that Wachapreague and the surrounding areas on the eastern shore of Virginia are so beautiful and untouched is that there are really no beaches there.

Instead, there’s a gorgeous salt marsh that draws all sorts of birds, and deep inlets that are home to all sorts of sealife.

And there are barrier islands with beautiful, untrammeled beaches – but they’re out between the bay and the Atlantic.

I am thankful for this, much as I love beaches. It has kept the eastern shore from looking like Virginia Beach or the Outer Banks, or any of a thousand other seaside spots that have been built up and built up and overbuilt up.

Here and there, of course, there are strips of sand, small beaches – like this one, on Burton’s Bay. It is lovely, and filled with fiddler crabs. One of these days, I’ll go swimming there. This time, I just painted.

***

If  you’re looking for something to do this weekend, you might consider taking a drive to check out the Mt. Gretna Outdoor Art Festival, in Mt. Gretna, PA.  It is supposed to be an excellent show – I will report about it on my blog, The Accidental Artist, if you want to know how it came out…

Wednesday Morning Salt Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

While the house is still a chaotic disaster, we are pretty much all moved, so breathe a big sigh of relief, and raise a cheer, and let me know if you need anything.

Table lamps? We seems to have six extra ones.

Nice drapey clothes that look good at work and are still comfortable? Finally, I am ready to let them go.

And if there’s anyone out there who needs plastic containers, kosher salt or throw rugs, drop me a line.

This morning, instead of unpacking, I went down the street and painted.  It’s so beautiful here in Wachapreague, it makes my heart ache. Even on a gray old Wednesday morning, with nothing spectacular happening, no special sky, no amazing sunrise, this is still one of the loveliest places on earth.

And it is quiet. Except for the sound of the gulls, there was no noise. You hear no traffic, no trains, not even anything off in the distance. It is quieter in Wachapreague than it was in Bolster’s Mills, Maine.

Yes, moving was tough, but it was worth it to end up here.

***

If you’re in Connecticut this weekend, stop by the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival! It’s an excellent and big show, with high-quality work – and it’s fun. Mystic is great for a weekend outing, too, as the Mystic Seaport, Mystic Aquarium and Olde Mystic Village shopping center are all there. Mystic is also just a stone’s throw from the Rhode Island beaches, some of the best in New England.

If you go to the show, please stop by my booth and say hello. I’ll be at the corner of Willow and Main, across from the post office and near the bagel place.

Harley

By Carrie Jacobson

Here are a few things I have learned while moving:

1. If at all possible, do not have an art studio on the second floor of a building. It’s nice to feel closer to the sky, but it’s really very much not nice to move All That Crap down several flights of steps.

2. If at all possible, do not be married to someone with ADD when you move. That person will simply not see that a closet is full of stuff, or that the basement is really nowhere near empty, or that, oh, yeah, I guess I did leave some of my fly-tying materials behind.

3. If at all possible, do not run your well nearly out of water while attempting to shock it to improve the water test you need to pass to actually close on the sale of the house. Especially do not do this during a drought.

4. If at all possible, do not schedule an art show in the middle of your move.

5. If at all possible, do not move in the middle of a sweltering summer.

6. If at all possible, just burn everything you own. Then move.

Want a portrait of your pet? It will look great in your home! Pet portraits make excellent presents, too … email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for details.

Big Sky

By Carrie Jacobson

I have not thought of myself as a consumer.

I do have too many clothes, beautiful clothes that I love, and which are now nearly useless as, after more than two decades of going into a newsroom to work, I no longer have a 9-5 job.

I do have too many painting-related items, too many paintings and too much paint, if there really is such a thing.

I have cut my own personal library down to about 50 books. I have thrown away boxes and boxes and BOXES of mementos, newspaper clippings, stories and novels and essays I’ve written. I have donated clothes and shoes and linen tablecloths. I have given furniture and towels and sheets and rugs and blankets to my daughter. I have left good stuff at the end of the driveway, and passersby have happily taken it home with them.  I have sold my dead mother’s possessions at yard sales, and given them to groups holding yard sales, and wheedled and whined until my siblings and childhood friends took them – and still, when push came to shove, we barely managed to fit most of our stuff into a 26-foot-long moving van.

I sat on the deck and looked at the truck and burst into tears.

“I don’t want to be a person who has this much stuff,” I wailed to my daughter and my husband. They love me and generally don’t think I am crazy, though this episode might have dislodged their certainty a little. “We could burn the truck and still live fine in our new house!” I cried – and of course, I was right. We bought the house furnished, after all.

“What IS all of this stuff?” I cried. “What IS IT?”

At this point, I would like to come right out and say that a lot of it is my husband’s stuff. While I would like to live in a house with a bed and two chairs and a flower arrangement, he would like to have a library stuffed with books, walls rich with paintings and photographs and work rooms with the right materials and plenty of them.

So that is him, and that is his stuff.

I told myself that, this move, I would limit myself to one box of things. You know the things, the things it’s so hard to part with, and the things that are so hard to explain. I tried for one box, and think I ended with three – which is far better than the 10 or so I began with.

In the boxes are letters from my mother and poems my father wrote, and notes from friends and staffers. There’s a magic wand given to me by a friend whose birthday and mine fall on the same day. There’s Oscar the Seal, my favorite stuffed toy, which began life as a gift to my brother, but which, according to my mother, I took instantly, before brother Rand had a chance to see it.

There’s a photograph of me and my long-gone dog Gus, at the top of a mountain in Banff, Canada. There’s my Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance certification pin. There’s the oddly shaped box with my baby hospital bracelet, and another tiny box that holds a pin my grandfather won for working for decades at Dupont.

It was hard to get it down to three boxes. Hard to toss out plaques and awards I won in my years in newspapers. Hard to toss out papers I worked on that reported history. A couple of those papers even made history, and I threw them away, too. It was hard to toss out the paper reporting Mike Levine’s death, but I put it in the recycle bin, and instead, kept a rock from his gravesite.

I threw out notebooks and cracked cups I had treasured. I brought old paintings of mine to Goodwill. I recycled my journalism portfolios, gave a hundred  books to the library, donated my skis. I let go of a lot this time. I faced a lot this time.

This time, in spite of the 26-foot truck, I made a lot of choices and came to grips with a lot of truths. I won’t work in a newspaper again, at least not in any capacity that requires nice clothes. I won’t ski again, at least not to the extent of needing my own skis. I won’t reach out to friends I haven’t thought about in 20 years, though I certainly will never truly forget them.

This move is some sort of defining point in my life, and for once, I am facing up to it, and all the truth it holds.

**If you are interested in buying ‘Big Sky,’ please contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Oil on canvas, 12x36. Please contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and shipping information

By Carrie Jacobson

I’ve spent a day or so in fear this week, mostly, I think, because I’d promised myself that I would take it easy this week, and I don’t do well with leisure.

So today, instead of taking it easy and succumbing, I am taking action, and refinding my courage. It’s there, I know it. I can feel it. But like so much in life, it wanes and waxes.

Yesterday, I thought: Leave my job? Leave my family? Leave this place I know?

Today, I think: Why not? I have a dream, I have a goal, I have a mission. No one is going to waltz into my life and meet my goals for me. No one is going to dream my dreams. If I want this to work, if I want to leave my paying job, and make and sell art, and make this life happen, it’s up to me to do it.

It’s up to all of us to do it, isn’t it? And to not settle for anything less.