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.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 10:16 am and is filed under Carrie Jacobson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.