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

Oklahoma Cowscape, 36×60

Shawnee was a one- and two-story town, with some interesting-looking shops and restaurants, some beautiful landscapes, and some of the friendliest people I met on the trip. Whenever I end up somewhere, I always think about what it would be like to live there, and I thought Shawnee would be a pretty good spot.

Except for the tornadoes.

I remember how horrible it felt when, while we were living in Cuddebackville on the bank of the Neversink River, a flood destroyed a lifetime’s worth of memories and a basement’s worth of possessions. It mangled our land and left a crater in our driveway, making it impassable.

I remember the terror, then the utter, bone-deep dismay, the terrible sense of loss, and, finally, the overwhelming joy that Peter and all the animals and I made it through alive.

My heart goes out to those families in Oklahoma. I have just the barest idea of what they are feeling, but even from my relatively tiny experience, I can tell you it’s awful.

Here are some ways you can help:

• THE SALVATION ARMY is organizing mobile kitchens capable of serving 2,500 people a day and sending them into the hardest-hit areas in central Oklahoma. You can make a donation here, or make a $10 donation using your phone by texting STORM to 80888.
• THE AMERICAN RED CROSS has set up shelters in communities across The Plains. You can donate to the Red Cross Disaster relief fund here, or make a $10 donation using your phone by texting REDCROSS to 90999.
• IF YOU’RE SEARCHING for a missing friend or relative or are within the disaster region and want to let folks know you’re OK, visit the Red Cross Safe and Well site here.

Eagle Nest, New Mexico

By Carrie Jacobson

On Thursday, I turn 57. It’s not a monumental year, not a 40 or a 50 or a 65. It’s one of those strange ages – 32, 37, 43. Indeterminate. Unheralded. Not loaded with meaning.

At this edge of this unimportant age, I realize that I do not miss my youth.

I miss my young knees and my young skin. I miss the red hair that for so many years was the bane of my existence.

But the rest of it, I am glad to leave behind. The struggles to define what my heart wanted, and to show what my brain knew. The fight to get ahead, to climb, to earn praise and promotion.

These days, I realize more and more that I know less and less. I read things I wrote back then and wonder at what I knew – and what I was happy to imply that I knew. I think I was smarter then – and certainly, I was interested in seeming smarter.

These days,  I realize, I desire less and less. I buy clothes only when I need them. I rarely wear jewelry. For my birthday dinner, I’m hoping my husband will cook burgers and oven fries, and I’ll splurge with an extra slice of cheese.

I have no regrets, not really. I wish I had the money that I spent on clothes and jewelry and other fancy things – but that spending brought me many happy moments, and I don’t regret a second.

These days, these insignificant days in the middle of an insignificant decade, these days I’m happy to be doing the work of a lifetime, making art and selling it to people who are made happy by it.

I am happy with the today’s gifts: a gentle sunrise, a loving dog, a husband I adore, family and friends who pull me through the hard times. I’m happy to live in a small house in a small town in a beautiful place. And live a quiet little life, rich with faith and hope and the joy of making beautiful things.

Delphiniums, oil on canvas, 18×24

By Carrie Jacobson

A prayer for all the mothers:

May love be the road you walk, with your children and with your own mother. It might not be an easy road, or a straight one. It might not be paved smooth and even. But it’s the best road, the surest road, the one that passes through the heart.

May you have the courage to hold fast to your convictions and your ethics, and to teach your children the hard lessons, the ones that will help them make their own best choices.

May you find the energy to seek your own inspiration, your own truths, your own beliefs and the strength to follow them.

May you have the joy of laughter shared, the pleasure of rich solitude, the comfort of family and friends when times are tough.

And may hope and faith be yours, today and every day.

Springtime on the Eastern Shore

By Carrie Jacobson

It’s a chilly spring here on the Eastern Shore, but it is spring nonetheless. Daffodils, dogwoods, azaleas, tulips, forsythia – for them, I guess it’s the sun more than the temperature that matters. Cardinals are here, and bluebirds, and the hummingbirds began arriving this week. And one day, soon, it will be warm.

On Tuesday, I learned that Charlie Harris, husband of Karen Harris, a friend from the Record, had died. He was young – well, what I think of now as young. Mid-50s, maybe.

He was young for death.

Charlie’s passing has shaken me deeply, not because we were especially close, but because, I think, he always seemed so very much alive. He always seemed full of energy, full of smiles, full of vigor and enthusiasm and life. It seemed that he had so much life in him that he would, he must, live for a long, long time.

But none of us does.

As this wintry spring comes and goes, all too quickly, all to briefly, I will plant a thought of Charlie Harris, and be glad that I knew a man who was so full of life.

Ganado, Arizona

By Carrie Jacobson

I loved the West. I loved the huge sky, the open plains, the amazing rock formations. I loved the mountains, the sagebrush, the cacti, the amazing dawns and dusks. I loved the tiny little towns, the big exotic cities, the adobe houses and mammoth ranches.

I loved how sunny and warm it was, how wild, how unpredictable. One moment I would be driving up a hilly little road, and the next moment, I’d be at 9,000 feet, looking out at mountaintops and seeing snow trapped in the shady hollows of the woods.

I was born out there, in Arizona, very close to the landscape I’ve painted here. I loved seeing the place where I was born, even if I don’t remember it much.

This was a great trip, and I loved nearly every minute of it. The best part was also the most surprising part, painting with my dad, outdoors, twice. How fantastic and rich to find something new that we share, him at 84 and me at 56.

And now, I am home, and happy to be home. Happy to have seen the world and come back to the quiet and the calm of the Eastern Shore.

As beautiful as were all the places I saw during this trip, there was no place… well, no place like home.

To see more paintings from my trip, click here to check out my blog, The Accidental Artist.

Around Christmas, my friend Ronet Noe, who is a fabulous painter and a delightful person, gave me a painting that I gave to our daughter as a Christmas present. Erika, said daughter, had fallen in love with the painting at the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival. Ronet wanted a portrait of her dog, Roy. So we traded, one for one.

Roy was one of the paintings I was determined to finish before leaving on my painting trip to Tubac – and so here he is! I really love this painting, and as so often happens to me while I am painting a dog, I lost my heart a little bit to Roy.

SPEAKING OF DOGS, I was accepted again this year into Paws for Charity, the fabulous pet-art-book project by Sara Harley. Sara says that there are 90 participants this year! You can check the project out at PawsforCharity.blogspot.com, and also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PawsforCharity.

The books are not out yet, but I encourage you to buy one when they do come out. They’re not cheap, but they are beautiful, and all the money raised goes to help a shelter in Canada. The artists get no money, Sara gets no money – but the animals do, and that’s why I do it. (Also, it’s great to see my paintings in a book!)

Here’s a copy of my page: