By Carrie Jacobson

I’ve been too busy lately, just too busy, and things have been slipping.

It’s OK,  it happens, but when it goes on for too long, it makes me a little crazy. It does truly feel like slipping, like being on a conveyor belt covered with oil, and doing a cartoon dance – whoops! whoops! WHOOPS! The world, with all its promises and commitments, is going by me faster than I can manage to go myself.

Of course, if it’s housework that slips, or yard work, cooking meals, or getting to the hair-cutter’s, that’s OK. But when it’s paintings, or work, or promises to friends, that’s not OK.

I wonder if this is part of what it feels like to get old — that you simply can’t get up the head of steam that you used to get up. That you can never catch up with the world, that it is always, and increasingly, going faster than you.

But now, the first big show of the season is behind me, and the next one is coming up — at the Wallkill River School gallery in Montgomery, starting April 1. The opening reception is April 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. Shawn Dell Joyce and I — both Zesters — are showing together.

Hope to not slip – and to see you there!

By Carrie Jacobson
The represented artists’ show at the Wallkill River School Gallery on Saturday was hot, chaotic, crowded – and fun! It is always a pleasure to meet new people, and especially new people interested in art. And it was just so great to see my old friends, artists and nonartists alike.

I met three Zest of Orange readers at the show, and that was such a treat!

Before the show even began, a woman came up to me and told me that she remembered “The Christmas Surprise,” one of the fictional serials I wrote for the Times Herald-Record. That conversation made my day!

And then the artists began coming in, and setting up, and it was like greeting my adopted family after a long absence.

There was Shawn Dell Joyce, with whom I’m showing at the Wallkill River School Gallery in April, and who I called before I made my first painting, when I realized I had no idea how to do a background.

There was Bruce Thorne, the first person I ever saw painting with a palette knife, and there was his wife, Lita Thorne, who showed me how to push limits and be unafraid to make my own paintings.

There was George Hayes, with whom I had my first show, and Nancy Reed Jones, with whom I had one of my best painting days ever. There was kindred spirit and animal lover Lisa O’Gorman, and the ever so talented Mary Muegle Sealfon and Janet Campbell, and scores of others who shared their secrets and their inspiration with me, and helped me begin to learn how to paint.

So yes, it was too hot, and too crowded, and too nuts for words, but it was great fun, and greatly reassuring, too. I am so proud to be included as one of the represented artists in the gallery. I am in such excellent company.

Blue Dreams

In just a few minutes, I will go over to the Lighthouse Gallery – a lovely little gallery near my home here in Connecticut – take my show down, replace the paintings with other paintings, and drive what is essentially my Lighthouse/Wallkill River School Gallery show to Boston for the Paradise City show, a major, very high-end arts and craft show that I am a little stunned to have been accepted into.

Chris Rose, curator of the Lighthouse Gallery, came over to my studio the other day to select the replacement paintings, and he put some notions in my head.

One was to try (again) a limited palette. The other was to work on two paintings at the same time.

I like a challenge, and I like Chris, so I tried both – and am I glad I did. I really love this painting. I can’t say that I understand it or can explain it. I can’t say that it adheres to anything in reality, or to any rules – but it has a soft feeling that really appeals to me. Also I am a sucker for blue, so there you go.

I will post the other painting – this one’s opposite, soon.

These are versions of a painting that I think might be the best one I ever did, which was bought by a dear friend of mine at my show in February at the Wallkill River School Gallery in Montgomery. I am honored  that my friend bought that painting – and really, also, helped me paint this new one.

If you are interested in buying “Blue Dreams,” please contact me for price and shipping/delivery options. The painting is in oil, on a gallery-wrapped canvas, 24×24.