A Spiritual Path

Interview with artist Diego Jacobson

By Mike Fitelson

Interview- O.K, so, here’s what I know about you so far:  I was at your exhibit last night, I believe before the opening began, but I was amazed.  Very beautiful subject matter that you deal with and you treat it in a very refreshing and insightful light.  I have a bit of an idea of what you are working on now and I went through several of your catalogs beginning with the 99’ forward, so I have a bit of an idea of how your work has evolved over time.  I have a series of questions to understand a bit better, about who you are, where you are coming from, and the relationship you have with your artwork. 

The first thing I am interested in is your experience in California because, I am from the Bay area and I always feel that I need a kindred spirit, someone who has some experience with California. 

Jacobson - My experience with California has always been nice. I have done many seminars as well as spiritual work there. P.T.S. (www.pts.org), the Peace Theological Seminary, which created the Masters program that I took in practical spirituality, is from California, Los Angeles to be exact.

Basically the way that I got involved with that was in 1993 I took a seminar called Insight Seminars.  It’s a 5-day workshop where they go ahead teach all the things that nobody teaches you about life.  For example: How life works and how to have success in your life.  Not necessarily economic success, but successful relationships, higher self-esteem and how to live more joyfully.

I liked it very much, so I took the second one (there are 3 levels) and after the second one, I think in July 1993, I asked the question: what else is there to life? 

I’m the kind of guy that when I like an artist, for example Paul McCartney, I know that anything he does, I’m going to find some value in that.  He released a new album; I know I’m going to like at least one of the songs.  I mean I don’t necessarily like the whole thing, but I like some of it.  So I thought, “who was the guy that created this workshop, Insight, and what else has he done??” I knew I would find some value in the other things he had done.  What I found out was that John-Roger had started creating workshops and seminars and giving talks but more of spiritual matter like how to live your spiritual life successfully. 

Interview- So the first five day workshop didn’t talk so much about the spiritual side?

Jacobson.- No, not so much.  I mean it deals with acceptance, cooperation and love, so in a sense, yes. But, instead of saying “God”, they say “Energy”. So they keep it focused on the physical. They deal with guilt and resentment, feedback and those kinds of things that  nobody teaches you how to deal with in your life normally.  The other work that he’s done was on the spiritual stuff.  It’s not religion; it doesn’t have to do with religion.  It has to do with spirituality.  So I started to investigate that and then in 98’, was when I finally took the masters program in practical spirituality.  The graduation from the Masters program in 99’ coincided with me starting to paint. Before that I hadn’t done anything artistic at all. 

Interview- Hm, that’s really interesting, well it sounds like from your bio that you had done some drawings before. 

Jacobson- Sure, like any kid does drawings. When I used to draw as a seven year old, you know and I stopped doing them because I judged that it was not good.  And then when I started to draw again, after the masters program all of the sudden I started looking at it and said, well it’s that’s my style, you know. The drawings were the same as when I was 9. I stopped judging, that was the key. The main thing I learned in the masters program was not to judge, you can’t judge anything. I think this was instrumental to my development as a painter.

I later found the notepaper from my masters’ class on which I started to draw again. It had a couple of faces and the note: “connect with the awareness of the higher realms; next step; go see God” on it. I pasted it onto a canvas and painted around it. Its called “Enlightenment”, 00.

Interview- That explains a quote in the opening, the beginning of your total energy catalog where you say, “I always like to finish products and I’ve learned not to judge the painting in process.”  And you still adhere to that?  Where you feel that every piece of art that you create is done is equal to the one’s before it?

Jacobson- That’s right, I just continue to draw or paint till I like what I have.  And what can happen or what happens with other people is that in the process they judge it as “well, this sucks” and they stop or they give up. 

Sometimes I go to a painting and I don’t particularly like the painting the way that it is that day, but I don’t judge it, I just continue to work on it until I like what I have.  Its just “in-process” till its done.

And I’m willing to just totally do something totally different working on a blue painting and you know, just give it up and start doing a green painting after that.  And ultimately I know that I’m going to get to the final painting that I like.  I realize that everything is perfect in a spiritual sense. I had to start with a blue painting to get that to show up on my green painting. What good would it have done me to judge the blue paint when I did not like it?? That gives me a great amount of freedom and makes the process fun and magical.

Interview- When you found this compulsion to create, when you got the masters and, I guess what I’m interested in is:  how did painting become your outlet?  Why didn’t you become a writer?  Why didn’t you become a great chef?  Why was it through painting that you found you could express yourself? 

Jacobson- As I said, I started to paint around the end of my masters program. This was spring 1999. I was very aware of my learning’s from the masters in non-judgment, trust, cooperation, intuition, ect. Around this time, Paul McCartney had his first exhibition.

I’m a fan of Paul McCartney’s work, you know, Beatles, Wings, as well as solo. So when I found out that he had been painting for sixteen years and he had his first exhibition, in Germany, I can’t remember the name of the town in Germany where it was, when I found that out, I got hold of his catalog from the show.

My concept of art at that point was like perfectionism, classical, like Rembrandt, Goya and stuff like that and it didn’t move me, it still doesn’t move me today.  And I really didn’t investigate other kinds of art because I just wasn’t interested. McCartney’s work is abstract expressionism and it shook me inside, it moved me. 

I then started to explore more art. McCartney was inspired by De kooning for example, they were actually friends, so I started to look at De kooning’s work and that really moved me inside, I started to explore that.  An artist friend of mine suggested that I might like the work of Hans Freeman because of his colors. I liked it and also Pollack and Picasso.

In the McCartney catalog that I got he did an extensive interview on the creative process, following the accident, working around blocks, ect. I read the interview and I got it.  I understood it.  I understood the creative process.  And that’s when I said, well, I can do that. 

And that’s when I got the canvasses and started painting, playing with the paint.  What I liked about it was that it fit with what I had been learning in the masters’ class, in trusting.  Trusting intuition, not judging and knowing that everything is perfect, things happen for a reason, etc.  It fit with that, cause what I could do was I could start playing with the paint and seeing what comes out of it.

I could say that perhaps I had good taste selecting the colors. I just started playing with the paint.  Following what might be called an accident but continuing with that mixture of colors for example.  And that fed into what I had been learning in the masters program. 

So, that’s why painting for me.   .   .  I enjoy it, that why it’s an art form or an expression form I like.  Whereas, for example they’re trying to get me to do sculpture and I’m also interested in doing it but it’s a different process.  It’s more on purpose, more ‘have to think about it’, ‘know what it is’, ‘create it’.  Less of an ‘accident’, less of flow.  The same thing applies to drawings. 

Interview- One that I would tackle would be music. 

Jacobson- Interesting that you say that because about 6 months ago I started making music.  And I have 33 songs produced on an apple computer, I can’t play an instrument because my physical condition.  But music is kind of like abstract painting.  I just start playing with the sounds and when I get to something that I like I leave it.  Its the same process as finding the abstraction. 

Interview- To me, it’s interesting that your invitation to painting came through what for most people was a musician.  And then, you know, you had loved Paul McCartney for sixteen years through the Beatles, Obladee, Obladah, going on and on. But that wasn’t the trigger for your creative side, cause when you sat down to write what you said about his abstract paintings, and of course, you know, that abstract painting is so much like a composition.  Particularly the classical because I know Paul has also dabbled with the classical.  Did you have a sense of that crossroads in 1999 that you could go musical? 

Jacobson-  No, I didn’t have an idea at the time.  (Laughs) I had no idea.  Like I said, I have a condition since I was thirteen years old.  I have been in a wheelchair couldn’t walk, etc.  I had brain surgery at 13, and I got better but I still have a condition.  So, I can’t really play instruments.  It’s not a disease, it’s a condition, a condition of the brain that affects my muscles. Its like I have too much tone.  And so I physically can’t really play instruments. Its kind of amazing that I can paint. I never really thought about exploring that area. And I only started to think that I could probably do it when I got a Mac’, you know and had Garageband and I understood that you could put loops together, that’s when I started to play with it.  But back in 99 it hadn’t occurred to me. 

Interview- so you’re doing a one-man band on the computer.  Like McCartney’s first album. 

Jacobson - Exactly, only he’s a musician. 

Interview- So tell me about this new musical development. 

Jacobson - So I guess its about last September, I got a Mac, I got the garageband, I started to play with the musical loops. The loops I can do and it’s very much similar to the abstract painting cause it’s kind of like, I just play with sounds and loops and when I hear something I like, I leave it.  And when then I can go and modify the notes and create different melodies and things like that. 

But also, like when I start to paint, I start to do a little bit of everything, I have some classical pieces, I have some rock, I have Latin, acoustic.   It’s interesting.  I have about 33 songs produced so far.  I don’t really see myself becoming a rock star or anything like that I just enjoy doing it.  And I can’t sing either; I don’t have a good voice to sing though. 

Interview- How long are the pieces? 

Jacobson- About three minutes, three and a half minutes.

Interview- And it’s all instrumental no vocals?

Jacobson- All instrumental, there some vocal tracks and I put some loops in like in three songs.

Interview- But the voice is used as an instrument, not to communicate content.  Do you feel like the music is coming from the same spiritual place that the paintings are coming from? 

Jacobson- Um, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say that. 

What I find in some of my paintings, I don’t know if you saw that yesterday, many times faces appear, faces and things, and in the same way in which faces appear which I don’t put into the painting, they just appear.  Sometimes I paint a painting and turn it over and there’s clearly a face.  I also feel that coded in some way some symbols or some whatever.  For example, when you walk into a room which has my paintings shown on the wall.  People can sense the energy that comes from the paintings. 

I went to Liverpool to see Paul McCartney’s exhibition back in 2002 and it was a bit of a let down.  Because the paintings, although I liked them very much, they’re very nice, you know, but I didn’t feel the energy, they’re like flat.  Last night you can sense the energy coming off of the paintings.  I don’t know what it is.  I have friends and my sister has friends who are clairvoyant and she happened to be in my room watching one of my paintings and she started to cry, she started ‘trip’ she started to go somewhere.  And it’s kind of like the paintings are codified.  I don’t know I can’t explain it. 

So I don’t feel like it’s the same kind of flow, spiritual flow with my music than with the paintings.  Perhaps I have good taste with music because I have a lot of experience listening to the Beatles, McCartney; I have a sense of what is good melody.  That’s why I can do music.  But I don’t think it comes from the same place. 

Interview- What were you doing before you went to the workshop and before you got the masters. 

Jacobson-  I went to school I finished in ’85, I started working in 85’ I started a company in Puerto Rico, manufacture clothing for the U.S. Government, I still do that today.  And that’s really where my world was and is still aside from the art part of it, just very routine very normal, mundane I would say. 

Interview- And it’s completely separate from your artwork.

Jacobson- Yeah.  I didn’t think I was very creative before I started painting.  I didn’t have really a form to express my creativity.  In business you can be creative but it’s very different.  But with the art I feel very creative and I like to produce, I’m very prolific, I have a lot of paintings. I have a thousand paintings produced and just like to produce, produce, produce.  It fills me and it makes me happy.  I feel great when I do it.  When I don’t paint for a while I feel the itch and I want to go do it. 

Interview-  How often are you painting?

Jacobson-  I paint probably 3 to 4 hours a week.  Sometimes more, sometimes up to ten. 

Interview-  3 to 4 hours every week.   So, we left off that you do not listen to your own music while you’re creating.  Do you find that you usually create with music with anything around you? 

Jacobson- I would say that I usually like to listen to music when I create.  Obviously when I’m outside I can also paint, I have my own interior rhythm.  But when I’m in my studio I always put DMX the satellite radio.  I just put on a station and I listen to it commercial free.  Usually it’s something with a beat, something where I can just get into a groove and flow with the painting.   I don’t listen to classical music, is what I’m trying to tell you. 

Interview-  It’s interesting because that also introduces more randomness. 

Jacobson- Yeah.  There’s a lot of randomness in just the way that I mix the colors.  I don’t put the paint on the palate and then put the brush on the canvas.  I put it directly on the canvas.  I just put the paint there and start mixing it together.  I never know what I’m going to paint when I start, expect for example when I do a face or a landscape, which I don’t do a lot, but I’ve done a couple, you know.  But for the most part when it’s an abstraction I just put the paint on the canvas and start mixing it together and playing with it.  See what comes out. 

Interview-  Just from what I observed last night and looking back through your catalogs, you have a pretty good set of techniques that you use.  And they’re very distinctive techniques as far as I can tell.  So, you’re using acrylic? 

Jacobson- Mostly acrylic because I like to paint a lot and I like to paint fast.  I do paint with oils but oils take a very long time to dry, they smell very strong.  And when you produce a lot like I do it’s difficult to have a lot of paintings drying at the same time so it’s not really convenient to work with oils.  Although, I like the effect that comes out and I use the same techniques with oil than with the acrylic. But the majority is acrylic.

Interview- So you’ll squeeze out a bunch of dabs, and my sense is that you don’t have an idea of what you’re going to create yet, the only selection you’re making is your color choice.  And it looks like you’ve built up your color choices since you started.

Jacobson-  I can say that perhaps I have good taste of what mixes nicely together.  But that’s about the extent of what I bring to the paintings.  I am self-taught as a painter. It’s just an accumulation of techniques that I’ve taught myself.  And like I said, I paint a lot, I have a thousand paintings done.  And the important thing about that is that as you paint, the more you paint the more experience you have.  So if you have a painter which has done 10 paintings you have a lot less experience than he’s done 50, than if you have 500 or a thousand.  So I packed a lot of experience into my 7 years of painting like a painter that’s been painting for 30 years  and I taught myself different techniques and I learn from that.  Sometimes I get to a point where I don’t like the painting yet and I just start changing my technique, instead of brush a spatula gets a totally different effect.

Interview- When you start from the very beginning and you’re squeezing out your colors, do you choose those colors based on a particular mood you’re feeling at that moment?

Is that tied to a particular sense of a type of a painting that you want to produce that’s coming from within you?

Jacobson-  Not consciously.  Consciously what I try to do is that I try to produce a different painting every time.  I don’t like to produce the same thing over again. I choose my colors based on frequency, the energy that the color has. It’s very instinctual. So consciously if I’ve done a red painting I try to do a blue painting or a green painting or an ochre painting.  Sometimes I try to do something totally different putting together colors that don’t look like they go together to try and come out with a painting.  I like the challenge.

Sometimes a make a painting where I mix colors that don’t obviously fit together.  It’s a challenge and I enjoy resolving the challenge by continuing to work the painting, adding other colors, whatever.  Some paintings are easier than others because of what I have selected as my colors. 

Interview- So you have the colors out and your beginning, your initiation for each painting is to try and create something new. Not necessarily a landscape or a face or whatever, something new, right?  I’m going to select this size canvass these particular colors and I’m going to endeavor not make this one or this one or the next one in the line.  Where does the technique come in?  I noted about three or four techniques you seem to have been using for 7 years or so but a few new things are being introduced. 

Jacobson-  For example, one of the new things I started to do in 2005 was I started to do drip paintings and that came about because I just happened to have a fluid paint, its acrylic but it comes in a container like a  ketchup bottle.  And I put the paint on the canvas the way I usually do just to mix it but this time I squirted it onto the canvas. I way in tending to continue adding other colors,  but then I looked at and I said, “that’s interesting, that would be bold just to leave it that way”.  And it’s a painting; it’s called ‘Preying Mantis’, 2005. That was my first drip painting and I left it just to be bold. 

But people liked it and I started to do more and more I started to play with that technique adding other colors and more techniques until I incorporated drip paint into my language of abstraction. It’s more difficult for me.  It takes away my ability to flow with brush or spatula.  Once you drip it onto the canvas it’s there, you know and you either totally mix it together or you leave it the way it is. 

It’s kind of like drawing because you have to think about where you’re going to put the paint before hand because if not, you’re going to have a totally different painting.  So later I started to modify that technique.  I started to drip the paint but then to spread it so I created a new technique.  When I come up with a technique its usually by accident, and I start playing with it and seeing what comes out of it. 

Interview-  One of the more established techniques that I saw throughout your work in the catalogs was this effect that you get where it almost looks like you’re blurring something, intentionally blurring something like Richter.  I think what I saw in the catalog when it caught my eye when I saw it last night was how are you achieving that effect? 

Jacobson-  That’s basically with a spatula, you kind of mix it together.  It’s interesting because if somebody else tries to do the same thing they most likely get brown.  It’s not easy to do but yet it just comes out.  Really its just spatula.

Interview-  How did you discover that technique?

Jacobson- Um, I started that in 2001.  With a painting which is called “Infinite wisdom”.  It’s a yellow painting with red.  And I really was just playing with it.  One of the techniques which I initially learned from the Paul McCartney interview, which I told you about earlier, when he gets blocked with a painting, that he tries just to fill the canvas, what he called ‘kill the canvas’ and take it from there.  So I tried to do that, but in this particular case I did it with a spatula instead of with a paint brush but I got a very interesting effect. What I like about this effect is that when I do it, many, many times things appear in that.  Different things appear in the so- called “Jacobson effect”. That what some critics have called it.

I like the magical part of it I like the fact that it’s magic.  It is magic when it’s like that, it allows for spirit to come through me and on to the canvas.  It’s as if I’m channeling what I’m doing, because I can’t do it consciously.  But yet when I play with it and just allow myself to be free and follow my instinct, stuff appears.  Trust is a big part.

Interview- Would you consider it random? 

Jacobson-  Random in the fact that it’s not on purpose.  But it’s not really random because I know what I’m doing, I do try and create that effect, I do that on purpose.  If I try replicate something I’ve done, I can’t.  So it’s kind of yes and no.  Its kind of random but not random. 

Interview-  The finished product, the finished image, do you preview that in your mind, trying to achieve what you want to see?

Jacobson-  No. I don’t know what the thing’s going to look like when I’m doing it.  But yet when I’m finished with it I know that’s the painting.  When there’s nothing else I can do to the canvas and I take a look at every square inch of the canvas, perhaps there’s a section which I’m not satisfied with I continue to work with that.  When there’s nothing else to change on the canvas then I’m finished.  Rarely do I come back to a painting when I finish it.  Occasionally I do, but only once.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone back to it a third time once I finish it. 

Interview- This also very much goes back to what you learned in your masters workshops.

Jacobson- Yes, definitely.  I trust that I will end up with something I like, so I just continue to paint until I get thing I like.  If I didn’t trust that I was going to get something I like, I would judge it and say, no this in not going to work and quit or, be frustrated.  I don’t get frustrated, it doesn’t happen.

Interview- Hmm, that must make you rare as an artist.  (Laughs)

Jacobson- That’s where the magic comes in.  I do believe in the magic involved at least I what I do.  Simply because I can’t do it on purpose, it just happens.  Something happens.  Some paintings are nicer than others, but yet if I do a hundred paintings I have ten or twenty which are masterpieces.  Others are nice but it happens.

Interview-  In your repertoire then, you feel like you’ve achieved several masterpieces? 

Jacobson-  Oh yeah.  The first one I’d say came within the first twenty painting I did.  It’s called “The wedding”, 1999.  And that’s what made me believe that I should continue to paint.

Interview- Now tell the process for creating this one because it looks like in the beginning you had some sense of what you wanted the painting to look like. 

Jacobson-  I’ll explain about this painting because I do remember it very clearly.  I was painting two paintings at the same time.  I started by mixing the background colors the ochre, the iridescent white, to create a background just a mixture of colors with nothing particular in mind and let that dry.  And went off to do another painting to do the same thing and the other painting is called ‘Two Face abstract’, I don’t think it’s in any catalog.  But it’s interesting when you mix a couple of shades and you see a face come out of the painting.  But I came back to this one and with my thick brush I started to paint downwards, what looks like a hat of the guy that’s standing there and I did another brush stroke which created like a belly.  And I saw that and I said aw, that looks like a guy so I painted the legs and then I saw that and put the shoes in.  Then I had the guy standing there and I said well I’ll try to do a woman with the iridescent white that I used for the background it should look nice.  So I did that and that was it.  In an hour I had that done, including drying time.

Interview- When did the title become attached to this painting?

Jacobson- That was pretty obvious to me, ‘The wedding’.  Um, when it was dry I had it in my house, the very experience I had as a painter was this.  Because when I started painting only one or two people knew that I was painting at the time.  Because it was kind of sudden you know.  But when they came to the house and saw this one among the first twenty that I did it was very shocking. 

Interview- This was Betsy’s favorite. 

Jacobson-  I appreciate that.  But that was my first sign that I should continue to explore the area of painting.  Because, magic, I had no experience, I start to a paint and yet it came out.  Also my music, I told you I have 33 songs and probably there are two or three that are classical masterpieces.  It happens, I can’t replicate, I don’t do it on purpose but it just happens to be there. 

Interview-  It’s funny you keep referring to the 33 songs.  I keep thinking of 33 and 1/3, you know the old vinyl.  And your fascination with the Beatles, that just blows my mind. 

It’s a magical number but a very significant number.  So, you managed to create in your mind a masterpiece within 20 paintings.

Jacobson-  I would say the 5^th or 6^th painting I did. 

Interview- What else would you consider among your masterpieces?

Jacobson-  Well, for example from the recent show which you saw last night, there’s a painting called ‘a spiritual path’.   Which also happens to be ochre. 

Interview- That’s the one the Betsy said, this is the one that would belong on our wall. 

Jacobson-  It’s ochre colored also, the one you’re talking about.  That’s another example, there’s many others. 

Interview- What makes that particular one a masterpiece in your own mind. 

Jacobson- To me, first of all, it’s very beautiful.  It talks to you, it moves you inside.  When you watch the painting for a while you’ll see things appear.  Messages and communication.  To me the painting is a communication between the non-physical world and the subconscious.  How do you communicate with the non-physical world?  Well, the language of that communication is through instinct, dreams, emotion, and intuition.  That’s the way that you communicate with the non-physical world.  What is the non- physical world?  It could be God it could be your soul, lots of different guides or spirits. 

Interview-  I think you make that very clear.  Your point isn’t religion, it’s spirituality.  Which does encompass everything from God to spirit. 

Jacobson- So to me what’s called a masterpiece would be, or is a painting which has a very clear communication.  You look at the wedding painting and everybody gets a sense of ‘wow’ when they look at it.  Somebody looked at that and said that they saw Jesus in this painting.  My interpretation is no more or less valid than yours or anybody else’s.  Both are valid, kind of like a Rorschach test in psychology where you take the inkblots and one guy sees the bicycle and another guy sees somebody stabbing somebody, you know.  Whatever they see, that’s correct, so your interpretation of the painting is correct.  So to me a masterpiece is something that communicates something and moves you inside.  You feel it you get shifted on the inside.  It’s beautiful, it’s perfect, there’s nothing you can do to change it.  There’s no part of the painting which is off balance or off color. That’s what I consider masterpieces. 

Interview-  What else in the show would you elevate to that level?

Jacobson-  In the show last night I liked the one called ‘The Awakening Heart’.  That’s a very beautiful painting also.  There’s another one called ‘Eternal Fun’, which is a yellow painting horizontal. 

Interview-  You met Manny Velazquez.  He’s kid from Washington Heights, he had no experience with abstract art when he was growing up because his neighborhood wasn’t doing art back then.  And we walked around the room and we talked about some of your paintings.  And the ‘Eternal Fun’ is the one that really spoke to him.  And he said he saw birds.  And that meant peace to him, because in his mind birds only live where its peaceful. 

Jacobson-  That’s beautiful.  To me it’s just magic because I didn’t see any birds.  I didn’t put any birds there.  And yet it’s very clear to him what the message was.  That’s great that’s part of what the magic is in my paintings.  I enjoy that, that’s why I enjoy doing the show.  Many times in my show people come, art professors and whatever, and just start crying.  It moved them inside and they cried.  That’s beautiful to me.  It’s not just people that come and keep walking.  Which people do and that’s perfect also, there’s nothing there for them to see or they’re blocked or in a different frame of mind.  But somebody who’s open and receptive and gets shifted inside, to me that’s why I continue to paint, that’s why I continue to do shows.  That’s why I want to do a book eventually.  I feel it’s a part a of my ministry, lets call it.  Just to keep painting and keep getting the message out there.  The range of my 900 whatever paintings, all of them have names which are positive.  I don’t put a negative name on the painting.  I just never do.  And many of them have messages which tie into the painting very clearly and can shift you when you see it, and say, ‘Ah’.

Interview-Where did the title ‘Eternal Fun’ come from?

Jacobson- Uh, where did that come from? 

Interview- Or for that matter, the awakening heart?

Jacobson-  The ‘Awakening Heart’ let me explain how I get the titles.  It always comes after I finish the painting, after I take the photograph.  When I take the photograph I look at it channel something and get the title.  It could be that it suggests something to me.  I believe that ‘Eternal Fun’ looked like there some characters in there that were enjoying themselves and having a good time. There’s a character in that painting that kind of looks like a bird that dunks in the water.  A funny kind of a bird and it kind of suggested that to me and I don’t know why its eternal but I put Eternal Fun.  I also put a title that doesn’t box it into, like ‘The Wedding’ is very clearly, everybody sees it and they see a wedding.  But there are some paintings that don’t have that.  I like to leave it open to lots of different interpretations. 

Interview-  And the ‘Awaking Heart’?

Jacobson-  The Awaking Heart looks to me like a heart.  The colors are there.  I like the term Awakening Heart it’s a positive thing for me.  Actually I didn’t realize this before but the Awakening Heart is the subtitle of Insight Seminars.

Interview-  In my mind, these three different, you said you had maybe 20 masterpieces, are all very distinctive.  Particularly starting with this where you had a very clear, you had created the background for it.  And then you made three marks and you immediately knew where you were going to go and it became figurative.  But the ‘Eternal Fun’ for instance, how did you go about creating that because I imagine that had a different creative process. 

Jacobson-  Sure, I have a painting which is called ‘field of dreams’, it’s another one of those masterpieces which is also a yellow horizontal piece.  I put with the spatula some purple paint and with the spatula I spread the paint and just creates an interesting effect.  Um, and actually that piece is in Argentina now, because I sent it for my show in Argentina and it stayed there.  But then with Eternal Fun I tried to do something similar and it looks like a totally different painting. But it’s similar yellow with the purple that created a different effect because of the drip you know.  I can’t do it on purpose, I throw the paint on there and I spread some of it, some of the drops turn into the heads of the characters.  That was a creative process where I was trying to use the same kind of colors that I used in previous paintings which were very beautiful and it turned out to be a different painting but also very beautiful. 

Interview-  Your process in this was very clear, once you recognized the hat and belly you knew where you were going. 

Jacobson- I knew that I had to create the guy.  At that point I didn’t know that it would be a wedding or that there would be a woman there. 

Interview- But at least you knew the direction.  Now in ‘Eternal Fun’ you made the purple mark and then where did you go from there?  What were the steps for the rest?

Jacobson- I would say no direction.  Like I say when I paint I usually try to create all the different areas within the canvass to make it look nice.  So I probably started to spread some of the purple paint and kind of followed my intuition with that one.  I didn’t have an idea in mind until after it was finished.  It could have been horizontal, it could have been vertical, I have no idea.  Many times I paint a painting and then I finish it I flip it around and that’s the painting.  I don’t know, another time an early painting was called ‘1940’s Man’ was a green painting with different shades of green and I was actually painting this in front of my mother and when I finished it I flipped it over and I could see clearly a 1940’s looking man.  But I didn’t do it on purpose; it just happed to be there.  And that’s the beauty of it, the magic.  I like that.

Interview- One more minute on ‘Eternal Fun’.  How long did it take you to complete it. 

Jacobson-  Probably an hour.

Interview- What signaled that it was done? 

Jacobson- When there’s nothing else I can do to the canvas to correct it or make it better.  It’s done.  When it’s done it’s done.  It’s intuition. 

Interview- Do the ones you consider your masterpieces, do you consider those being done faster than the other ones.  Do they take less work, do you know what I mean?

Jacobson- Uh, yeah I would say that.

Interview- So it’s a less painful birthing process.

Jacobson- Yeah, it’s less of a challenge.  There are some paintings which I mentioned earlier which were a challenge, which I enjoyed the challenge.  But I would say that the ones that turned out to be masterpieces do take less time.

Interview- There is one when you walk in where you put a sublime blue green purple which we’ll get to in a second.  You’re off to the right and there was a very large canvas with a crescent of green I want to say.  I suspect you flipped that one when you were done.

Jacobson- I probably flipped it a couple of times. 

Interview- When you’re in the process of dripping .   .   .

Jacobson- Many of the drip paintings I do on the floor and walk around them.  Some of them I don’t but most of them I do.  And that’s an interesting one too.  Last night for example in that particular painting called ‘signals’, I think, in any case last night I saw some faces in there which I had not seen before.  That’s also what I enjoy about my paintings that I can see them over and over again and things appear that I didn’t see before but they’re there.  I have a painting in my bedroom which is from 2001, ‘Infinite Wisdom’  I mentioned it earlier which just last week I saw a new face in it which I hadn’t seen before.  A very clear face, that’s the magic of it. 

Interview- Some people would argue that you weren’t ready to see that face until now. 

Jacobson- Yeah, probably not. 

Interview- Tell me a little about the drip process, because I imagine the background you work up vertically.  You work the background on the easel then you take it off and you do the dripping.  Do you have particular drip techniques or what?

Jacobson- Yeah, I have a mezzanine in my studio and sometimes I climb on the mezzanine and throw paint from on top the mezzanine so you get a big splatter on the canvass. 

Interview- The critics, the acad. Whatever you want to call these people, when they’re looking at and wrestling with your artwork.  How are they treating your message?

Jacobson- Interestingly enough, I would say unanimously they get spiritual part of it.  They’ve all talked about the spirituality behind the work they look back to the history of art and stuff but they also get the part that there’s something spiritual involved with what I’m doing.  That’s interesting to me because it could be totally different, it could be they just totally dislike the paintings. But it seems like they all, so far, seem to have got the part that it’s spiritual. 

Interview- One part of your evolution has been figurative painting.  Do you feel like you’ve left figurative painting for now?

Jacobson- Uh, wouldn’t say I’ve left it.  I enjoy more abstract are because I feel that the magic can come through.  I still do figurative stuff, I do faces I do things like that but I enjoy more the product of abstraction.  It allows more of the magic to come through.  When I do a nice face for example, a portrait, it’s nice but the magic that’s there with the abstraction is not the same. 

Interview- Do you have a legacy or a message for humanity?  What is the legacy of your artwork? You have now, 965 paintings floating around, perhaps they’re not all collected or hanging over somebody’s mantle piece or what not.  Some time Diego Jacobson is gone, you got a million paintings floating around the world, what is that going to mean?

Jacobson- I think that if people get touched by my art and start to ask who was this guy that does this painting and listen to half of the things that I say about trust, and everything’s is perfect, and all the spiritual message that’s behind my work, my spiritual path and get touched by that.  The titles of the paintings, which are poetic in themselves, perhaps shook them and allowed them to get on their own spiritual path.  There are lots of spiritual paths, not just one. 

Interview- That painting was titled ‘A spiritual path’.

Jacobson- That’s right.  Really if I can make people start to explore that in their own life and recognize things that they already know about the spirit, about God I’ll feel that I have accomplished what I have come to do.  And as a by product I create pretty pieces of art on top of that. 

Interview- Well that’s the interesting part too and it probably separates your pursuit from what most folks are doing is that the painting is just a product it’s the message that you’re really trying to get across.  The painting is a pretty bauble in order to get ‘eternal fun’, ‘awakening heart’ a ‘spiritual path’ if you are gifted as a poet you wouldn’t need to paint if you were a filmmaker that’s what you would be doing.  It just happens to be that you picked up a paint brush, a spatula and you’ve got this eye for color and used it.  That’s the vehicle of your message. 

Jacobson- It’s really the excuse to get the message in there.  To make people think and