Behind the Frame: An Interview with Cindy Jacobs
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Time to read 9 min
Behind the Frame with Cindy Jacobs: Warmth, Pattern, and the Everyday Studio
Cindy Jacobs' artwork has a way of making everyday beauty feel worth slowing down for. Flowers, farm scenes, familiar objects, Scripture, hand lettering, and pieces of home all find their way into her work, creating a collection that feels warm, personal, and deeply connected to the places and memories that shape us.
Cindy Jacobs | Countryside Barn Rural Farmland Field Landscape Elm Floating Framed Canvas Wall Art in a farmhouse entryway.
That makes Cindy a natural fit for our latest Behind the Frame theme: Warmth, Pattern, and the Everyday Studio. We spoke with her about the subjects she returns to again and again, the Nebraska farm memories that still influence her work, the many mediums she loves exploring, and why a good studio day sometimes includes a trip to the chocolate drawer.
Paint Ideas and a Chocolate Drawer
Cindy's studio days are full, varied, and often split between hands-on painting and digital finishing work. When she needs a fresh look, she has a very relatable reset waiting nearby.
What does a typical day in your studio look like these days? Do you have any routines or little habits that help you settle into creating?
Most of my days look like a cross between painting artwork and eating lots of chocolate! Most days I paint 8 to 11 hours at my art table with watercolors or at an easel with oils or acrylics. Other days, or even for weeks, I might be at my computer scanning art and finishing it and making edits in Photoshop. I can add different backgrounds and other objects I have painted to make lots of art in the computer. This gives me tons of flexibility to make art for specific colors or trends.
Sometimes I need to take a break and get a fresh look at my art. A trip to the kitchen to my chocolate drawer usually does the trick!
When I walk away and come back, I can immediately see what is wrong, either in design or color. If you work on something too long without a break, you can get stuck. Really, it's crazy, but I never suffer from lack of ideas. Usually, I have too many ideas and I can't get them all done! I have stacks and stacks of sketches and ideas. I hope I live to be 120!
Cindy's watercolor palettes and brushes.
My biggest problem is prioritizing which project I should do next. I want to do them all!
The Things We Return To
Across Cindy's work, certain subjects and creative tools keep reappearing: flowers, words, familiar scenes, and the materials that best fit the feeling of the piece. Those returns are part of what gives her work its warmth.
You work across so many different mediums, from watercolor and acrylic to oils, calligraphy, photography, and mixed media. How do you decide which medium feels right for an idea?
Some artwork seems to need a more "misty flow." These pieces I like to do with watercolor. I can also get a very fine line with watercolor and like to use it for artwork with lots of detail. Or sometimes a piece requires a very washy look; again, watercolor is great for that.
Oils and acrylics are new for me, and I just love it! In fact, I could hardly sleep at night when I started because I just wanted to keep painting! Oils and acrylics provide a do-over. In fact, you can paint over it and do it again as many times as you like. There is no "do-over" with watercolor, so this medium was fun for me, although I need to let it go sometimes and not keep doing it over!
I started doing calligraphy when I was in sixth grade, so I have been creating lettering and fonts for a very long time! I just love to make letters pretty. Adding words, Scripture, and family quotes to artwork drives the meaning so much further. "Heart" is at the center of my art.
Flowers, familiar objects, rural scenes, words, and pieces of everyday life seem to find their way into your work again and again. What subjects do you never seem to tire of creating, and what keeps drawing you back to them?
I just LOVE flowers! Both of my grandmothers and my mom had extensive flower gardens. I loved looking at the flowers, and many times we would take family walks through the gardens and look at the different types and species. I was always drawn to their colors and petals. So, I NEVER tire of painting flowers in all their splendor!
And of course, growing up on the farm always brings back good memories for me. A farm scene always makes me feel warm inside, melancholy. Especially the "golden hour" at sunset. The hard work of the day in the heat of the sun would be offset by the cool of the evening and a beautiful golden setting sun. Somehow it was magical.
Front View of White Poppy Farm Meadow Canvas Wall Art by Cindy Jacobs
Where the Days Were Long and Slow
Cindy's Nebraska upbringing gives the rural side of her work a personal center. The farms, cows, gardens, and open fields are tied to a slower pace of life and memories of family, work, and home.
Your Nebraska upbringing has been an important source of inspiration throughout your career. Are there particular sights, objects, traditions, or memories from that time that still find their way into your work today?
I love a field of cows grazing in an open field of grass. Somehow the slowness of it all takes me back to a time when days were long and slow. The cows don't seem to have a care in the world.
We worked hard, but there was not the stress and hurry of life as we now know it. There were no iPads, iPhones, computers, or internet. It was just work and family. We had a network of relatives and many cousins that were all the same age. My mother had a large vegetable garden, my dad planted large sweet corn fields, and of course my mom did lots of canning. We lived a lot off the land. Simple... it was grand.
Cindy Jacobs pictured with a large pasture painting.
Slowing Down Enough to See It
For Cindy, inspiration often starts with paying attention. She gathers ideas from walks, gardens, roads, shops, and the everyday places where color, shape, and memory can catch her eye.
Where does inspiration tend to find you in everyday life? Do you collect objects, take photos, jot down ideas, notice certain colors, or have another way of holding onto something that catches your eye?
I am always looking, viewing, seeing the beauty in everyday life. I take a lot, I mean A LOT, of photos. When I see something that inspires me or I think has beauty, I don't hesitate. I snap a photo. A walk along a lake or river. A walk in the park. Viewing flowers at a friend's house. Driving down a dirt road. Seeing a pasture filled with cows or a barn. I always love barns. Barns of every shape and size mesmerize me! Sometimes I will see a display in a store that inspires me. An antique store or vintage thrift shop. So much beauty everywhere, just slowing down to see it.
Mostly I take photos. And again, I have piles of sketches. I can paint fast, my publishers say I am very prolific, but it will never be fast enough to paint all the things I want to paint!
"So much beauty everywhere, just slowing down to see it."
Artist Cindy Jacobs outdoors posed against a rusted bridge.
A House Is Just One Big Canvas
Cindy's creativity does not stop at the edge of a painting. Decorating, refurbishing furniture, remodeling homes, and creating artwork all seem to come from the same instinct: seeing what something could become.
Your creativity extends beyond painting into decorating and refurbishing furniture. How do those other forms of making influence your artwork, or vice versa?
Anything creative inspires me at an unconscious or conscious level. Sometimes you can take an idea for furniture refurbishing and apply it to a painting, or vice versa! A house is just one big canvas to me, waiting to be painted and come alive with color and ambiance. Each room becomes its own piece of artwork.
I have finally settled into my final home, but my years of flipping houses will always be a remembrance for me and a long abiding influence on my artwork.
I have always loved home decor and staying on top of the latest trends in decorating. I was 18 when I first married and settled into my grandparents' farmhouse. I immediately started to decorate. I refinished the antique woodwork in the whole house. It was bright orange! Taking down layers and layers of wallpaper and putting up new. So fun!
So, making artwork for stores to sell really fills my bucket. Helping others to create beautiful rooms for themselves and their family to call home. And that is what makes each home unique. The decor represents everything that person loves. They come home to a home that is "them." Unique and wonderful to their own personality and taste.
Cindy Jacobs | Americana Floral Bouquets Canvas Wall Art in a kitchen dining nook.
Art That Comes Home With You
That connection between art and home is part of what makes Cindy's retail artwork meaningful to her. Once a piece leaves the studio, it becomes part of someone else's everyday surroundings.
Your artwork eventually leaves the studio and becomes part of someone else's everyday surroundings. What do you hope your work brings to the homes and lives of the people who choose it?
Happiness, joy, peace, serenity.
Recently, I saw a young lady checking out at Hobby Lobby, and she had the "cowboy boots filled with flowers" artwork of mine in her hands. I told her that it was my artwork, and it was so very meaningful to me. She said, "I just love it," right there! Mic drop. Mission accomplished!
Cindy Jacobs | Chic Bouquet Boots Elm Floating Framed Canvas in a farmhouse bench setting.
Always Something Else to Paint
Even after years of creating, Cindy is still experimenting, planning ahead, and finding new subjects she wants to explore. Some ideas are tied to trends or seasons, while others feel timeless no matter when they appear.
What are you working on or exploring right now? Is there a subject, medium, technique, or idea you are particularly excited about?
I am continuing my mission of exploring oil and acrylic paints. Everything I learned in watercolor about mixing colors translates to these new mediums, and I am just loving it.
I usually work on the themes around the current holidays or time of year. So right now, I am working on fall themes, but they will not come out until fall of 2027. Everything is usually on a one-year delay for introductions, so you always have to be thinking way ahead. But some artwork is timeless. Flowers will always be timeless and, in my mind, create beauty and happiness whenever, wherever they go.
I love the moody dark florals and artwork that is so popular right now. I am excited to paint some artwork of book stacks. That will be fun! I also have sketches of some vases of blue hydrangeas and white peonies I am working on. I am also preparing many of my original art pieces to be in several gallery shows this fall.
From the subjects she returns to most—flowers, farm scenes, home, and the everyday beauty around us—Cindy’s artwork brings that same sense of warmth and reflection into the home.
Explore more from Cindy Jacobs below.
Shop the Cindy Jacobs collection
Cindy Jacobs is an artist and designer whose creativity spans watercolor, acrylic, calligraphy, graphic art, photography, furniture refinishing, home decor, and mixed-media work. She loves exploring different textures, mediums, and subjects, bringing a hands-on creative spirit to everything she makes.
Much of Cindy’s inspiration comes from her Nebraska farm upbringing, where long summer days, winter adventures, family gatherings, and a strong sense of faith left lasting impressions. Those memories continue to shape her artwork, which often reflects flowers, farm life, Scripture, home, and the everyday beauty found in familiar places.
