Kicking Up Dust
Oil on canvas, 30×30

By Carrie Jacobson

Cowboy Up! Oil on canvas, 6×6

By Carrie Jacobson

In the spirit of the season, and with inspiration from Marc and Angel  and, yes, I admit it, tags from my Yogi tea, I’ve come up with a list of five things you can give yourself, now that Christmas is over. These are all free, and when you’re in the right place, they’re easy.

1. Believe in yourself. What you feel, what attracts you, what inspires you, this is all legitimate. If you’re drawn to a person, an idea, a pursuit, go with it. If you can’t make time for it, if doing it seems difficult or insurmountable, whatever it is is probably not for you. Do what you’re good at, and what feels good.

 2. Tell the truth – or as my mother would say, tell your truth. Whenever you can, no matter how scary it is, you’re better off telling the truth – especially to yourself. If telling the truth is going to hurt someone else, and you don’t want to do that, then stay silent. Do anything but lie.

3. Forgive yourself. Whatever you did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say, promised or didn’t promise, it was then. It was in the past. You can’t change it. What matters is this moment. What you can change is this moment. What you can participate in is this moment.

4. Forgive the other guy. Forgiveness is liberation. It frees you from the bad feelings. It keeps you from living in the past. Forgiveness lets your forget, or at least minimize anger, hate, bad feelings. And without them, believe me, today looks much better.

5. Accept who you are and where you are in life. You are perfect. It might not seem so, from time to time, but you are. The things you think of as failures, they are learning experiences. They are growing pains. The things you think of as shortcomings, they are motivating opportunities. The things you don’t like about yourself, someone else loves. So today, take this moment to accept yourself.

What would you add to the list? What gifts are you giving yourself today? Please use the comments below.

Bank of Waves, oil on canvas, 20×40

By Carrie Jacobson

I’m thinking about summer.

Thinking about summer, and warm places, and sunshine and open skies.

Thinking about wearing sandals and seeing my hair get summer-blonde highlights. I’m thinking of seeing my wrinkling face warm from this awful winter pallor and start to look alive – and perhaps a year or two less old.

I start my show season in Indio, California, in late January. I’ve never been to California, so this is exciting – and doubly exciting as it’s the first stop on my second sponsored painting trip (click here to find out what I’m talking about…) . From there, I start painting my way east, stopping for a show and a nice long visit in Tubac, Arizona, where my dad and stepmother live, before trekking east, to a show in Albuquerque in early March, and then home to Virginia, painting the whole time .

Sure, it’s cold, even here in Virginia. It’s winter, the days are short, and it’s as it should be. I’m grateful that it’s nowhere near as cold here as it is in other places I’ve lived… Maine, Connecticut, the mid-Hudson Valley.

The wheels turn, and winter will thaw into spring for all of us. And even before that, I’ll get some sun and some scenery and some adventure. I can’t wait!

Bank of Waves

By Carrie Jacobson

Autumn has spun off into winter, even here in the south. If our mornings are not surprisingly cold, and smelling insistently – and falsely – of snow, then they are thick with fog and quiet.

Our little town empties out in winter. One day last week, I think we were the only ones at home on the whole street.

And that’s OK. It is a breath out, an exhalation, a quieting of soul and life and air, and the very town.

I have shows already for 2014, and find my mind drifting ahead, to California in January, Arizona in February, New Mexico in March. A wide roundup of the southwest, with visiting and family and painting, and sun and open skies and the wide adventures of the west.

But here in Wachapreague, it is now, and it is winter, and I will exhale, and I will paint and I will treasure this quiet life.

Sunflowers, oil on canvas, 48×48

By Carrie Jacobson

One of the reasons that I love to paint is that I love the way it makes me feel. I love where it takes my head, where it takes my heart.

When I am painting, it seems that the world goes away. Well, that’s not really right. My surroundings recede. My worries recede. Whatever is dark and sad in my life recedes, and I am left with what is joyful and full of promise. I am left with color, and with light, and with faith.

I paint – and especially with something like this piece, this big, bright, heavily textured sunflower piece – I find a rhythm that helps transport me, helps bring me to that transcendent place, that place where sorrow is something just out of the frame, just off of the horizon.

We euthanized our 15-year-old Pekingese on Monday. He had had trouble walking for a couple of years, and his back legs pretty much gave out a couple months ago. This weekend, one of his front legs seemed to be on the way out. It was arthritis, the vet said, and Looie would not get better. He would not come out of it.

A Day Without Lou Reed

By Carrie Jacobson

The Times Herald-Record laid off all of its photographers and several experienced editors this past week. And Lou Reed died this past week, too.

It would be a stretch to say that the events were linked in any way, even metaphorically. But I can say that they both made me sad, and both made me long for times long passed.

The editors whose jobs the Record eliminated were incredibly hard workers, talented and bright, with experience and the amazing ability to solve a huge range of problems. They’d learned to work without pretty much everything that an editor needs to run a good paper – and yet, they persisted, building the best paper they could with the meager resources left to them.

The four photographers whose jobs were eliminated were among the best shooters I have ever seen. They documented the life and times and people of the mid-Hudson Valley for decades, and they did so with precision and verve and a big dose of love and art.

In its heyday, when Mike Levine was the editor of the Record, and I worked as Sunday editor and art director, the paper had a rough and tumble quality that I loved. We wanted to do something different, we wanted to be a paper that mattered. We wanted to be the paper that we were, heart and soul, not some weak echo of someone else’s idea of a good newspaper.

And making that tenuous stretch, that yes, perhaps tortured connection, I’d say that that was Lou Reed, too. Far as I know, he never wanted to be anything other than himself. Yes, he had his moments of doubt and pain, his weaknesses and his failures – and the Record did, too.

But even if you didn’t love the end result, I think you had to respect the integrity of the Record and Lou Reed.

I’m sorry they both are dead.

Autumn’s Best of Cheer

By Carrie Jacobson

I know that autumn is inevitable, but every year, it excites me. And now that I paint, it excites me even more.

It’s more than the colors in the fields and in the trees. It’s the pleasure of kicking through fallen, drying leaves; the thrilling snap of a frosty morning on my cheeks and in my nose; the way the stars gleam sharp and brilliant in these clear and chilly nights.

But painting the fall is the best, and this scene is sort of the quintessential autumn painting for me. It’s a study for a larger painting I am doing as a commission. And for all of you in the mid-Hudson Valley, yes, it does look familiar. It’s on Route 17A, on the left as you’re heading into Florida.

I took the title of the painting from a poem by Helen Hunt Jackson. You can click here to read the entire poem; the stanza I lifted the title from is right here:

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer’s best of weather,

And autumn’s best of cheer.

First Fall, oil on canvas, 10×10

By Carrie Jacobson

Early autumn has a dusty look this year. The colors are soft, underlined with gold and tan and brown. A certain tired dryness seems etched into the still-green leaves, and the field grass crackles and whispers in the wind.

Even though it is early, and autumn’s clothes are thin, the colors pull me in, the swirl of change  and promise visible, tantalizing. It is coming, it is here in a whisper, with a hint of color, and fire, and drama – or, this early, a rich aging, a gentle turn, handsome, quiet, recognizable.

Pound Ridge is a lovely little village tucked into the mountains of eastern New York, Westchester County, near Katonah. If you’re in the area, or looking for a scenic autumn drive, come to the show! It takes place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

***

HALF THE DAY Friday (today), I’ll be painting outdoors at Olana, the home of Frederic Church, in Hudson, NY. I’ve been juried into a plein-air paintout with a selection of marvelous painters, and I am excited! Painting will be followed by an auction Saturday at 5 p.m. at the estate. I won’t be there, but you can be, to see the paintings and bid on them, too.

Click here for more information.