Poppies No. 2, 16×16

By Carrie Jacobson

I started painting flowers a couple years ago, and I admit, I started timidly, never having been a real fan of floral painting. But over the years, I found that I liked to paint sunflowers, and tulips, and I also found that people like to buy floral paintings.

So I kept at it, kept experimenting and discovering, trying new approaches and new colors and new flowers, and just this past week or so, experimented my way into a style I really, really love.

It reminds me of Peter Max, with the bright colors and the black outlines, and the whimsical shapes. I wrote about this on my own blog, and a few readers chimed in with their own Peter Max and Max-related memories. One wrote to me about the favorite dress she had as a kid – one that she remembered because of my painting… and her memory reminded me of my favorite dress as a kid. It was a swingy minidress, covered with blurry, bright red and orange and pink flowers – not so different from the flowers in this painting!

At any rate, if any of you want to see this painting, and my other new florals, in person, check out the Paradise City Arts Festival this weekend in Northampton, MA. It’s a drive from the mid-Hudson, I know, but it should be a pretty drive, full of fall colors. And the show offers a wonderful collection of art and high-end craft – and good food!

Meantime, I hope you have great memories of beautiful gardens, bright flowers – and your favorite clothes!

By Carrie Jacobson

In just about two weeks, sunset will begin to get earlier.

And yet, it seems a moment ago that we all were feeling, even here in Virginia, that winter would never, ever, ever end.

Summer has ambled into town like a sun-blonded surfer, who suddenly seems to have lived here forever, though no one can remember him moving in. The days stretch out, long and yellow and topped with towering thunderheads, that surfer lolling on the beach and promising to work, but never quite getting at it.

These past few mornings have been sweet with the heavy scent of honeysuckle, and rich with birdsongs and the surprisingly loud flutter of wings. I’ve watered the gardens before the sun can get at them, and filled the birdbath, and enjoyed  watching the robins and their friends take ridiculously long baths, getting so wet they can hardly fly.

Before we know it, summer will amble out of town as silently as it came in. But I am going to notice. I’m going to take advantage of the sun and warmth of these long, tawny afternoons. I’m going to delight in the cool early mornings. I’m going to watch the flowers bloom and pass, the birds come and go, and I’m going to enjoy every minute of this sunny warmth.

I hope you will, too.