Carolina Dreaming

You and Me, Carolyn Jacobs, c.2005, oil, wax and sand on paper

Last night I dreamed I was inside one of my paintings. Underground, forced to scoot around because it was so cramped  I couldn't even crawl.  It looks very different though, because now I realize I've always painted the scene from the outside, looking in.  A small shaft of light illuminated the space, which was populated with amazingly large creepy crawly creatures. I was searching for something terribly important, and I knew what it was during the dream, but now that I'm awake, I've lost it.  I searched for a long time though.

I love and hate such a vivid experience------

Beneath the surface; that's what is interesting.

Drift
oil, wax and sand on prepared paper 14x11"
Collection of J. Pender

Begotten

 

Begotten
oil, wax and sand on canvas, 36x24"

Eye Candy

Wolves, colored pencil, about 16x20", 1995
Commissioned by 3D Brands, location unknown

Still recovering from surgery two weeks ago (!), so here is some old work eye candy for you. This was an illustration commissioned to go on one of those nature t-shirts/sweatshirts. I believe the company was bought out soon after the work was commissioned, and I have no idea if it was ever actually printed.

Campus Scene #2

oil on canvas, 24x48", 2005
Collection of Central Piedmont Community College
currently hanging in lobby of IT Building

Campus Scene #1
oil on canvas, 40X60", 2005
Collection of Central Piedmont Community College
currently hanging in Overcash, 3rd floor

Peggy Rivers asked me to come with her on a little field trip today. She was taking her Landscape painting class to view two paintings of mine that were commissioned by CPCC in 2005. The paintings were intended to hang together in the lobby of the IT Building, but were separated about a year ago. It's been a long time since I've listened to someone critiquing my work! Of course, it wasn't a real critique, as they were way too positive, but it's nice to look back at work completed three years ago, and realize it's a little like seeing a long lost child. I remember many of my thought processes...which surprised me a little---since I seem to forget everything else. I remember exactly how and why I painted the tree and mulch the way I did; why I chose the colors I chose. I can remember the brushes I used the most. It made me realize that I can actually remember that about almost all of my work. Yet I can't remember what I did for my last birthday, or what I had for breakfast this morning. Of course, I can look at it and see things I should have changed in some way, but I also noticed areas that make me back to the moment I painted it. And it all just makes me want to paint a whole lot more.

Frazier Park Mural Eye Candy

Frazier Park Mural, 4th Street Tunnel
C. Whitman, P. Rivers and students
Arts and Science Council Grant, 2006

Student David French works on the Frazier Park Mural, 2006

No Evils, oil and wax on paper, 22x30"

Another of the moth series.

Dream Roses, oil and wax on prepared paper
location unkown

Another of the dream series...people often ask me where the rose images come from...so, here's the story: I was in my early twenties and stopped by a friend's party one evening. While there I received some unwanted attention from a man who just happened to be in a wheelchair. The problem wasn't the wheelchair, it was the fact that I just wasn't interested---I was pining for someone else, and, party guy was a sloppy drunk. But, his disability made me treat him differently...rather than brush him off like I wound any other sloppy drunk, I was too nice. I was patient when he tried to trap me in corners; I was patient when he tried to chase me to my car in his wheelchair (kind of humorous now--but frustrating then). No, he never caught me, but I was relentlessly chased. Finally, I escaped. The next day at work, two dozen roses arrived, along with a clear expectation that we were dating. So, what I was reluctant to do the evening before, I was forced to do---sever any expectation on his part. But I was disturbed by my initial reaction...why hadn't I done this (and been ruthless) the evening before? You can do it, and not be heartless. Anyway, I took the roses to my studio and pinned them to the wall--to remind me to be straightforward, etc. As the roses withered, they seemed to draw toward each other and form their own relationships. I began to draw them and consider them personalities. Eventually, they came to represent people in my drawings, and become comments on my own relationships. Dream Roses is one of the first of these images.

Dream Moth

Dream Moth, oil and wax on prepared paper
Collection of P. Kowalok

I read a haunting description of a moth being drawn into a flame in Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm, and moths became a motif for me. The voids in this image are from a dream....I dreamt I was in an desolate landscape; all I could see were these round, earthenware pots jutting up from the land. I spent the entire dream running from pot to pot----looking in and finding nothing.
I used to think about that dream a lot, but now I try not to think of it.

Remembrance of Things Past.......

Dead Flower, oil stick on paper, c. 1990.


While I will admit Proust was tough to plow through in college, and frankly, I didn't make it all the way through at the time, it has managed to stick with me all these years.....

I have been very busy with that teaching thing....

I was flipping through some old sketchbooks the other day and found this funky little sketch....I remember thinking when I'd done it that I'd drawn something from my past.....no, I'm not one to really go for reincarnation or anything like that, but if I remember correctly, I had recently read Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, which is a fabulous little book about remembering and discovering....

And, I was looking through old slides and found this work, which is oil stick on tar paper, done about 20 years ago! It's in the collection of my friend Barry Motes....I think I will post a few older things here and there...looking at them makes my fingers itch to work.....I love the texture and color of this one---I remember the tar paper was lots of fun to work with, and I understand the peice has held up over the past 20 years, which sort of surprises me, I guess.