Big Sunflowers

By Carrie Jacobson

Sometimes, I just have to laugh at myself, and the places this life is taking me. This week was one of those times.

I needed a huge painting for my booth at the shows, and so, over the weekend, I set out to fill a gigantic canvas – 48 inches by 60 inches – with sunflowers. I love painting them, and people love to have them in their homes, so it’s a great combination. And this time, on this giant canvas, I painted the sunflowers bigger than ever.

It took tons of paint, tubes and tubes and tubes and then even more tubes. It was so heavy that I had to ask my husband to help me move it up on the easel. I painted for days and days and days. I made thousands of strokes. And then, when I was done, I had a fabulous, massive painting.

And so I turned to my next canvas, for a project at a nature center in Mystic, CT. And this one, below, was 5 inches by 5 inches.

It just made me laugh.

Not So Sunny Sunflowers

By Carrie Jacobson

Here at the end of March, a March that’s felt like May for the most part, the world seems finally to have slipped back into place. A biting wind – a March wind – slices across our yard, taking last year’s leaves with it. The yard is hard and gray, and it seems there is more dirt than grass.

I think that all this feeling came out in this sunflower painting – and to my surprise, I like it! I like the feeling of the last days of spring, of color washed away and muffled, but promising, promising. Friends and family have urged me to seek some darkness now and then. It’s hard to wrench myself from the blue skies and bright sunflower fields – but there is wisdom in what you all help me see.

Shawn Dell Joyce and I will be showing our work during the month of April at the Wallkill River School gallery. The opening reception is April 14 – but the show is up for the whole month. I hope you come by and check it out! The Wallkill River School is at 232 Route 17K (Ward St.) in Montgomery.

Red Sunflowers

By Carrie Jacobson

Here are things that make me happy:

• My husband, our family and our families
• My friends
• God
• Painting
• My sobriety
• Strong weather of any kind
• The feeling of freedom, even if it’s fleeting, even if it’s just a taste
• A big sky, with no pesky trees
• Coffee
• Bacon
• Knowing something before others do
• A clean house
• A house that’s dirty because I’ve been so busy doing things
• The smell of dust rising in the early moments of a rain storm
• The spring songs of birds
• Going somewhere I’ve never been
• Change
• Sunflowers

And you? What makes you happy?

Sunflowers, oil on canvas, 30x40

By Carrie Jacobson
The moon was so bright last night it cast shadows on the snowless, frozen ground. And this morning, I heard the springtime calls of birds.

Spring will come, though winter barely visited – and for me, it can’t come soon enough.

The little teeny early spring daffodils are poking up in the garden. As I drove on the highway the other day, I could see the red tinge of buds on the tips of the trees. Often, in the morning, there’s the springtime smell of earth thawing, that rich, dark smell that must evoke some basic essence in us all, some ancestral connection with the soil.

Yes, there are piles of snow in the yard, and yes, my fingers freeze when I take the dogs out in the morning – but soon enough, even the dawn air will be warm, and the grass will green up, and the sunflowers will begin to bloom.

Rainbow Sunflowers

By Carrie Jacobson
Winter has settled in for what appears to be a short visit. I find I’m liking the snow, how it half-covers the still green grass, the unraked leaves, the tree trunks downed by the summer’s storms.

I like the white sky and how the patches of white above and below show off the tips of the bushes in the yard, reddening with the whispered promise of spring.

I heard a spring bird four days ago, and doubted my ears. Heard it again three days ago. And today, Peter says there are bluebirds in the grove.

So I have painted sunflowers, sunflowers of wild, marbled colors, sunflowers that sing with the song of summer birds, come calling in the winter’s snow.

This painting is part of the Passages project – 100 10-inch by 10-inch paintings, each on sale for $100. Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com if you’re interested in this one, and check my website to see more of these paintings!

Sunflowers

By Carrie Jacobson

Peter filled the feeder for the hummingbirds last night, and they are flashing and happy and drinking up this morning. My guess is that it’s the last time he will fill their feeder this year.

The past two days have been finally, blessedly cool enough that we – finally, blessedly – shut off the window air conditioners and opened the windows wide and let the warm days and cool nights breathe into our little house.

A hurricane is blowing up along the coast, sunset is coming more quickly each day, and grass and gardens all seem dry and brittle and spent.

I’ve always loved fall. I loved school, and fall meant school, and books, and classes and learning, and I loved all of that. It meant new clothes, and nights where I could wear shorts and sweaters, and it meant the trees coming alive with color – and I loved all of that.

I luxuriated in this summer’s golden twilights and slow, lengthy dawns. I soaked up the sun and the glorious flowers and all the brilliance and shine of this summer’s steamy, sunny days. And much as I love fall, I’m sad to see these broad, open days pass.

A friend of mine died this week, a friend from high school. We reconnected last year, both of us sober for decades, and blessed to be. We rejoiced in this, and in renewing our friendship, which we’d done by computer.

She showed up at one of my shows this summer, a wisp of what she had been, thin and dry as the August grass. But her smile was beautiful and her joy genuine, and we talked and laughed and hugged, and said we’d get together soon.

We did not. And now, she’s gone.

Autumn comes too soon, stealing summer’s wealth, and death comes too soon, as well.

I must remember this.

Sunflowers, Tuscany

By Carrie Jacobson

I went to sleep last night, and everything felt OK.

I got up this morning, and after I’d been working for a while, I realized that my back hurt, just under the shoulder blade on my left side.

I started painting professionally and posting paintings to my own blog, The Accidental Artist, a couple years ago.

I was doing something on my blog the other day, and looked at a screen and learned that I’d made 500 blog postings.

(That also means 500 paintings… in fact, it means well more than 500 paintings, as they are not all posted).

I woke up just a while ago, and it was springtime.

Now, it’s the last day of November.

How life happens while we are engaged in living!

***

Sunflowers, Tuscany: Oil on canvas, 30×40.

Please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and shipping/delivery information.