"Along Flowing Springs Road", 12x16, oil on copper, Chester Springs Pennsylvania, Birchrunville, paintings of Chester County, Pa. Pennsylvania impressionist, en plein air, Airbnb , Maryanne Jacobsen Fine Art, art collectors

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"Along Flowing Springs Road", 12x16, oil on copper

A few years ago my husband and I found a delightful Airbnb in Chester Springs, Pa. where we stayed for a few days after I finished a week of painting in the yearly Plein Air Brandywine Valley festival. It was our treat to ourselves to return to our beloved  neighborhood where we had lived for 15 years before moving to Florida.

Chester Springs is a hamlet of rolling hills, abundant ponds that flow from underground springs and stone Gentlemen's farms with a horse or two in the pasture at all times. It is a neighborhood  filled with nostalgic memories of long walks up and down country roads, sleigh rides in winter and  my kids and dogs chasing geese and deer in our back yard.

Our rental was  a tiny cottage off a winding country road, and especially beautiful at that time of year with autumn displaying herself in full fanfare to our delight. Here's my hubby enjoying a cup of coffee in the brisk autumn air.

Of course I did my best to paint as much as I could during those brief few days, even though I had just finished a full week of painting! I painted the cottage, of course.

I painted the burning bush shrubs around the corner on School House Lane, and I painted the little church up the road as well.

I also painted an old barn with a red roof on St. Matthews Rd, a block from where we used to live.

I painted a gorgeous oak tree at Marsh Creek Lake, and if you like the painting it is available through Stakenborg/Greenberg Fine Art in Sarasota, FL.

 In short I crammed a lot of outdoor painting into a few days!!!!!

The painting above was not painted that week , but it was the scene that you saw as soon as you stepped out the door of the cottage and looked up Flowing Springs road. I did attempt to paint it but there was not much room on that tiny country road, and a school bus almost put me out of commission for days!

Here is my painting from that day:

I love the freshness of plein air painting, and alas , it is often impossible to recapture the freshness once you are indoors! I titled this one "Autumn in the Country" and it is available through Station Gallery in Greenville, Delaware.

Unfortunately this delightful little Airbnb is no longer available for rent, so I will probably not have another opportunity to capture this country road en plein air.

So I painted it again, in the studio with mixed feelings. What do you think? Which one do you like better? Plein Air or studio?

I would love to hear your thoughts! If you are interested in "Along Flowing Springs Rd.", please send me an email at maryannejacobsen@aol.com.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

"Along Flowing Springs Road", 12x16, oil on copper, Chester Springs, Birchrunville, Birchrunville Store Cafe, bucolic scenes, fall landscapes, Pennsylvania impressionism, paintings on copper, Maryanne Jacobsen art

"Along Flowing Springs Road", 12x16, oil on copper

This is my second attempt to paint on copper, and it went well this time around because I already had one painting under my belt!

Flowing Springs Rd. is a little winding road that weaves along Chester Springs near the border of Birchrunville where the old township building used to be located. It is quite scenic along there and I recall happy days riding my bike along there when I once lived in Chester Springs. I would bike from St. Matthews Road all the way up to the Sheeder-Hall Bridge at French Creek, passing the fabulous Birchrunville Store Cafe along the way.

There are very few homes along there, it is truly pristine rural countryside, and happily the residents of West Vincent Township have been able to maintain the bucolic countryside through their efforts to impede mass development.

I painted this scene en plein air two years ago when I was visiting the area for the annual Plein Air Brandywine Valley event. I stayed at a lovely little AirB&B right on Flowing Springs Road, which I painted recently and you can read about here.

I used the photo I had taken as well as the plein air sketch to create this new painting. Fall was in fall bloom and there is no better place to see the fall foliage than in Pennsylvania! Here was my view as I looked up the road:

If you are ever in the area, do make reservations at the Cafe.  It has been years since I was there, but I understand that the standards of culinary excellence have not changed!

If you are interested in this painting, please feel free to send me an email at maryannejacobsen@aol.com. Thanks for visiting!

"Along School House Lane", 12x16, oil on panel, Maryanne Jacobsen art, paintings of Chester Springs, Birchrunville, Pa., fall landscapes, Pennsylvania landscapes, Chester County Pennsylvania

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"Along School House Lane", 12x16, oil on panel

School House LAne is a short little lane off St. Matthews Rd., in Chester Springs, Pa. It leads into Birchrunville, a scenic and tiny little town with a post office, antique store and cafe. This road was very familiar to me when I lived nearby on Houndstooth Lane. We would often ride our bikes here on the way into Birchrunville for the annual Fourth of July parade.

I painted this scene of an overcast fall day, because I loved how the color or the reddish bushes stood out against the  dark tree trunks. I hope you enjoy this scene as much as I enjoyed painting it.

"Along Flowing Springs Road",14x11, oil, plein air, paintings of country scenes, Chester Springs art, Pennsylvania art, Chester County art, MAryanne Jacobsen original paintings

"Along Flowing Springs Road",14x11, oil

I just returned from a painting trip to Pennsylvania where I had the opportunity to paint a plethora of lovely autumn landscapes. We stayed in a lovely cottage in the little town of Chester Springs, where I lived and raised my family before moving to Florida.

I did a lot of plein air painting while I was there, as the weather cooperated and the autumn scenery was magnificent.

One of the scenes I decided to paint was looking right up the road from our little cottage at a barn at the top of the winding road.

I thought  that standing in the driveway was a perfect vantage point to capture the nice curve of the road, while being sheltered from any possible country road traffic. Little did I realize that I was standing under a hickory tree that had weapons of its own to throw at this hapless plein air painter!

If you've never seen the nuts of a hickory tree, I can tell you that they are mammoth! Before even getting started on the painting, I took a tumble on the gravel as my foot turned over from one of these nuts that were the size of baseballs. Not to be deterred, I set up under the tree anyway. But that was not the end of the tree's revenge on me.  It kept spewing nuts on my head as I tried to paint the scene!

After a couple welts, I decided I was not going to be target practice for the tree anymore. So I gave up, packed up all my gear and headed back into the cottage.

Happily, I could still see the scene  from the kitchen window, and so I finished the painting indoors.

If anyone had told me that hickory trees could be a hazard to a plein air painter, I would have laughed!

Not any more. I do think plein air painting could be listed as one of the top ten  most hazardous activites that people can do!

Thanks for reading and please feel free to contact me at maryannejacobsen@aol.com of you would like purchase info on this painting.

"The Old Springhouse", 16x12, oil on gessoboard, by Maryanne Jacobsen, palette knife landscape, Pennsylvania springhouse, old buildings, impressionism

"The Old Springhouse", 16x12, oil on gessoboard by Maryanne JAcobsen

This is a painting of an old springhouse that was up the road from my last house in Chester Springs, Pa. The building may be old but it has a tremendous amount of character, and with the dappled light cascading over it, I knew immediately that I wanted to paint it.

In case you are not familiar with what a springhouse is, here's a definition from Wikipedia: A spring house, or springhouse, is a small building used for refrigeration once commonly found in rural areas before the advent of electric refrigeration. It is usually a one-room building constructed over the source of a spring. The water of the spring maintains a constant cool temperature inside the spring house throughout the year. In settings where no natural spring is available, another source of natural running water, such as a small creek or diverted portion of a larger creek, may be used. The main use of a spring house is for the long-term storage of food that would otherwise spoil, such as meat, fruit or dairy products.

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"Birchrunville Springhouse", 8x10

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"Birchrunville Springhouse", 8x10, oil on wrapped canvas

I took a photo of this old springhouse a couple years back, after a trip back to Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. The dappled light across the springhouse and road was pretty stunning that day and that was what I sought to capture in this quick little study. The springhouse was just up the road from the old Birchrunville cafe and post office, and close to route 100. If anyone knows the exact road, just send me an email. It was north of Hollow Road, if I remember correctly. A dog was barking at us as we took the photo , so I didn't wish to loiter too long!

Here's my reference photo of the scene:




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"French Creek at Birchrunville, Pa", 16x12, oil, by Maryanne Jacobsen

"French Creek at Birchrunville, Pa", 16x12, oil on canvas

This is a smaller version of a painting I did a few years ago which I titled "God's Palette". It depicts a tributary of the French Creek in Chester County, Pa. right off Hollow Rd. at the Sheeder Hall Bridge in Birchrunville. A favorite fishing and picnic spot of my husband and I in the days when we lived in Chester Springs, (see photo below) I invariably grow home sick for the place around October when the fall colors appear in all of their bewitchment. Birchrunville was an easy bike ride from my old home and is home to a fabulous post office/ gourmet restaurant, gorgeous gentlemen's farms, and of course the French Creek's babbling waters. It has an annual fourth of July parade that is second to none for its quaintness and quirkyness.


This painting was done with palette knife only and contains thick impasto strokes of vibrant color.
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