Power Trio

The other day, about this same time, the moon came up early and full and the color of peach ice cream. The sky was a tender blue-pink that it only seems to reach when there is snow on the ground – and the rising of that moon and the turning of the seasons felt like the rising of my heart, my hand just grasping the knob that will turn for me and and open the door to something new, something with promise – and I said a prayer of thanks and hope – and took a picture, too, just to remind myself.

Interested in this painting? It is oil on canvas, 36×48, and it’s for sale. Contact me for price and delivery options – carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Lulu

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made a painting for the Art for Shelter Animals Project, and so it felt really good to make this one. Plus, it gave me a much-needed break from interviewing, covering and writing about people and events in Montville. (Anyone want to check out the Montville Patch, the site that I run? Click here).

Lulu is a dog I met through work. She was dropped at the shelter, pregnant, with what must have been her 20th litter (or more), judging by the sag and droop of her breasts. She had a litter of nine puppies in the shelter, and they are all spoken for. Lulu is up for adoption, herself, and really needs to go to a home where she will be loved and treated well and treasured. Maybe this home will make up for how hard the rest of her life has been.

She has had to have an operation, a mastectomy, I believe, after one of her much-used teats became infected. But she is up and around, and can be adopted soon. I am going to give the animal control officer the painting tomorrow.

That’s the way the Art for Shelter Animals Project works. Artists from around the world have joined in, all making portraits of animals in their local shelters, or with local rescue groups, and then donating the portraits to the shelter or rescue group. The shelter can do whatever it wants with the paintings. It’s a fun, fascinating project – anyone who wants to join in, just let me know!

Making art to give away is an incredibly liberating experience. It was through the ASAP that I began to experiment with colors and textures – I felt free and unafraid (at first I typed “unarfraid,” which actually seems like the right word…) – free and unafraid, and why not? The group receiving the portrait was going to love it, no matter what, so the specter of “bad” or “wrong” simply vanished.

Max

One of the many things falling between the cracks here with work and painting is marketing! Eek!

“Rough at Hand,” my show at the Wallkill River School Gallery, is OPEN! It is up for the month of February, and there is a reception on Saturday, from 5-7 p.m.

I had a once-in-a lifetime experience as I hung the show last Saturday. I’d just gotten it all up, and made a price list. I was sitting down contemplating, when in walked two people who had bought paintings from me last year. They love my work – and between them, Saturday, they bought five paintings. When they asked if they could take them, I said sure!

I had extras with me, and so I rehung, repriced – and thanked my lucky stars not only for the money that those two were willing to part with, but also, and even more, for the fact that they loved my work. Honestly, there is something so moving about that, so sustaining, so life-affirming, that it makes my heart beat fast now, just thinking about it.

Please come to the opening! I am just as excited as I could be about my new work, and it is more precious than ever to me, as my time to paint is so scarce these days.

The Wallkill River School Gallery is at 232 Ward St. (Route 17K) in Montgomery, NY. The website is wallkillriverschool.com.

For those of you in Connecticut and Rhode Island, I will be having a show in March at the Lighthouse Gallery in Groton, with the amazing Laura Maiolo. More on that as it draws closer.

For those of you in NY, see you Saturday!

Yowza, Cowza

There are days when my brain feels as blank and undefined as the surface of the snow in the yard, and this is one of them.

So I will let it go by saying that I really enjoy painting cows, and I have no explanation for that. I have no real love of cows (though I get pretty excited about a good burger…) – I’ve never had a cow, or wanted a cow, or held a particular fondness for cows. I mean, they are fine.

I do like seeing them standing in fields, though. And I find it intriguing that they like looking at humans about as much as humans like looking at them.

I stumbled on this enjoyment of painting cows by accident, when I was traveling through Wyoming. I got off the road (I got off the highway at every exit in Wyoming, just to see what was there), and bumped on down a dirt path, and a group of handsome if large and menacing cows crossed my path and required me to turn around. I took photos, and have made several paintings from these photos, and all have sold. So I am not the only one who enjoys looking at cows.

When we lived in Idaho, we had a little dog who despised cows. They infuriated him, and he would bark like a crazy dog whenever he saw one, including once when we were crossing an open range and a large crowd of horned, huge black Angus surrounded the car.

Gus even barked at a statue of a cow that stood outside a steak joint.

So, “Yowza Cowza,” another in the bovine series.

Don’t forget about my show, “Rough Hand” at the Wallkill River School in February. The opening is Feb. 5. Don’t worry, I will remind you again!

Lavendar Field

A year or so ago, I bought a painting by Patrice Lynne Young, a Georgia artist whose work I love. It was a painting of lavender fields rolling off to mountains in the background. I loved the painting and still do, and I look at it every day and appreciate it.

A year or so ago, in my show at the Wallkill River School, Shawn Dell Joyce and I demonstrated our painting techniques. I demonstrated palette-knife painting, using Patrice’s painting for inspiration.

The painting here is the painting I started during that demo.

I began it and then invited people watching to participate, and lo and behold, they did! They all had fun, and for the most part, made marks that made sense in terms of the painting. A couple really didn’t, and so I never finished the painting, never knew what to do with it.

But it has intrigued me for a year, and I have looked at it for a year, and so, one day last week, I pulled it out and went to town.

I guess it’s fair to say that this is my painting – but it is my painting based on a painting by an artist whose work I love, and a painting informed and helped along by friends and strangers. And so, it is very much like life.

My show this year at the Wallkill River School – titled Rough at Hand, from a poem by Robert Hegge – is Saturday, Feb. 5.

Please save the date, and please come to the opening from 5-7 p.m. I will have new work, small work, big work, and exciting work! I think you will love seeing it in person, so please come, say hi, and let me thank you in person for your support.

The Wallkill River School is at 232 Ward St., (Route 17K), in Montgomery.

Rough at Hand

Love is like a landscape which doth stand,

Smooth at a distance, rough at hand.

– Robert Hegge

Storm!

A big storm blew in, the day after Christmas, and for a stretch, the world was filled with wind and sky and the howling power of nature. The next day, you’d not have known such violence existed.

In the blanket of calm that came after the storm, I walked through our quiet, white yard, and felt like the only person in the word. My footsteps broke the surface, and I was the adventurer.

In the branches overhead, swaying in a sudden burst of wind, a hawk alighted and hung on. I stared up at him and he hesitated, spread his wings and glided off, an impossibly large creature wending through branches I’d not have thought a sparrow could fit through.

I love the violence of the storm, and the bout of peace that follows. Like waking and sleeping, breathing in and breathing out, it defines and sustains us all at once.

This was the fifth Christmas I’ve lived through without my mother, and the first I’ve gotten through without being swept by sadness. Time might not heal, but it covers the wind and the rage and the storming pain with something quiet and tender and not unlike the snow.

This painting is 36×48, oil on canvas. Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information.

Into the Dawn

By Carrie Jacobson

Once, I had a thought about the last car on the highway. In my mind’s picture, I drove along at night, stars above, the miles spinning away beneath my tires, and it was something I wanted, a feeling I craved, hurtling into the unknown, alone and silent, leaving everything behind.

Now, I realize that I was in a dark and lonely place when that picture-thought came to me. At the time, I believed I was OK.

Today, I think I’m driving into the dawn, not alone, but the last of those before me and the first of many to come. We might not see each other, we might not know each other, but we are traveling together on this road, and there is comfort and joy in that for me.

I wish all Zesters and all Zest readers the best of things to come in this new year.

On the Way to Warwick

By Carrie Jacobson

What a year this has been! What gifts I have received!

So often, I am on the way to one place, on the way to one destination, when something comes to me, out of the blue – and it is beautiful, or gentle, or thought-provoking – and it was nothing like what I was setting out to do, nothing like the destination I was setting out to find.

This is what happened with this painting. It was a crisp October day, and I was on my way to Warwick. This scene was so beautiful, I nearly drove off the road. I’d have given something precious to be able to paint it in plein air, but the road was narrow, and the shoulder even narrower. A photograph was my only bet.

Back home, I painted in the studio, and much in the way that I’d found this scene I had not been seeking, I found views and colors and resonances in the photograph that I hadn’t known were there.

In my mind, that makes it even more of a gift – because it’s something I wasn’t expecting, wasn’t seeking.

I hope that you all stumble on treasures in this new year. I hope that you seek, and that you find – and I hope that on the way, you find something else. Something wonderful that you weren’t seeking at all.

If you are interested in buying this painting, please contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information. It is 36 inches by 48 inches, oil on canvas.

Paintbrush

By Carrie Jacobson

Early this cold morning, I was driving past an inlet where a skim of ice had formed, and it occurred to me that that is what it’s like to age.

We harden, bit by bit. At first, it’s just a little skim, along the edges. The sun will come up, the day will warm, and it will all be gone, forgotten, the surface moving and alive and sparkling in the light.

Then one day, one cold, cold day, the skim grows, until one edge touches another, covering the entire inlet.

Finally, it freezes solid.

I want to make sure that I never freeze solid. I never want to be so set in my ways, so sure of myself, so absolute, that all of me is frozen, edge to edge.

I vow, then, to wake every day and turn to the sun, and to warmth, and to the knowledge that while my mortality is certain, my stasis need not be.

Buddy

By Carrie Jacobson

In these short, dark days of winter, death seems to be crowding in. Friends and family have lost beloved dogs – like Buddy, here – and in my own life, three of our dogs seem suddenly, frighteningly old.

Time comes to all of us then, and here at the tip of winter, it seems more stark and more certain than ever.

It is no wonder that, in these long dark days, we decorate our houses with light, that we sing songs and gather together and cheer for life. We must! And we must never lose our hope, our faith, our belief that dawn will come.