The Idle Challenge: Discovery, Rediscovery, and Recovery

"Real dreams are about seeing what others miss. If you have your head in the clouds, you can see the world more clearly." - Tom Hodgkinson, How to Be Idle

Reflections On The 30 Day Ramble 

What a month of painting and reading and writing and daydreaming this has been. Thanks to Leslie Saeta and her 30 Day Challenge over 1000 artists participated in a challenge to paint and write and post for 30 days. The collage image above was created on PicMonkey and was much easier than I ever expected.  The paintings are on my website now and I would be delighted if you were to take a swing by there to look at the gallery, and just click on an image to see the full painting.  

The 30 day challenge was very much a 30 day ramble, a reflective walk through the landscape of my own creative process. 

Discovery

A good reflective ramble will open one's eyes, and I discovered a number of things this time around. First of all my trusted guidebook, "How to Be Idle" was a great eye-opener. I actually didn't know what a ramble was until I read this book. And I never really thought about how weavers were in charge of their own day until manufacturers came along and became their bosses. I have a couple of people to thank for this - my friend, artist Aryana B. Landir introduced me to creativity coach Mark McGuinness who recommended I read Tom Hodgkinson's "How to Be Idle." I loved finding a quote from the book to accompany each painting and to inspire the spin of my reflection on the painting experience. Blogging, like painting, is an opportunity to reflect.

Rediscovery

It may be hard to imagine losing sight of the joy of painting, and before the challenge I was burying the joy under a whole lot of unnecessary stress. It was time for me to step back and rediscover the joy of painting for the sake of painting. What other reason could I possibly have to paint but that I enjoy it? Why not paint figures? Why not paint flowers or landscapes? Why not take a crack at non-objective abstracts? Why not collage? Why paper? Why not Yupo and Crescent Board? How about mixed media?  

Recovery? I Don't Think So.

I have enjoyed this challenge because I allowed myself not to be covered - buried - under the stress of doing. I don't want to be re-covered in the kind of stress I felt before I started the challenge - I want to continue to be the loafer, the daydreamer, the rambler, who paints because it's fun. I've uncovered the joy. No need to "re-cover!"  

Thanks for following along. I hope it was as much fun for you as it was for me.  I'll continue blogging along - not every day - but I plan on writing once a week.  

On Being Idle: Star Gazing, Daydreaming, Painting

"Memory" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 17 1/4" x 20"

"Gazing at the stars opens our minds to another reality. a mysterious eternal world, beyond material struggle." - Tom Hodgkinson

Day 25 - The Crowd Appears

It is day 25 of the 30 Day Challenge, and I'm a couple of paintings behind, but my boss is ok with it. I took two days to finish "Memory" to my liking. So many decisions go into making a painting, and when there is a deadline of sorts, decisions that I normally might put off to "never" get made within 25 hours. I took a box cutter to the painting early in the morning and cut off about 180 square inches. And later in the day I eliminated a couple of figures and also set about delineating the space the figures inhabit - this vague mysterious environment hinting of doorways, arches, light, passages.

Hodgkinson has a chapter in How to Be Idle titled Midnight: The Moon and The Stars, in which he writes about the importance of star gazing in the life of the idler, of how contemplating the stars "reconnects us with the childlike sense of wonder at the mysteries of the universe."  In a similar way, painting can reconnect the artist with the childlike sense of wonder one has about the mysteries of the universe. Perhaps it can also awaken or reconnect that same sense of wonder in the viewer.  I suspect that those who create works of art in any medium - music, dance, theatre, visual art, literature - have a generous sense of wonder driving them to explore and create.  What do you think?  

At Sea: At Ease

"At Sea" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 18" x 20"

"My own theory is that the world is divided into two types: the idle and the anti-idle."

 -Tom Hodgkinson

Day 21 - The Challenge To Be Idle

To be "at sea" literally means to be "on the sea" or on a sea voyage. But, oddly, when it is used figuratively it refers to be being "lost" at sea and is used to suggest that someone is "confused or at a loss." I suppose this painting could be viewed as a metaphor for being at a loss or it could be taken literally, to be on a sea voyage.  

For some, a cruise is a bore unless it is filled with activities to keep them going every minute of the day and night, eating, dancing, gambling, drinking, singing, shopping, playing games, watching stage shows, working out in the gym, taking tours. For idlers the best cruise days are days at sea, where there is nothing to do except eat, sleep, read, lounge around the pool, or lounge around the deck, or lounge around the lounge, and read or write or paint or snooze or daydream.  Guess which category I fall into. 

I am totally at ease at literally being at sea where I always choose to be idle. This month, for Leslie Saeta's 30 Day Painting/Blogging Challenge,  I'm hoping to find the same ease at being idle on land in my studio!  So far, I'm on idle!  

The Challenge of The Dream

"If You Dream" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 20" x 28"

"Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day life. Dreaming is a connection to our unconscious.`" - Tom Hodgkinson

When The Dream Presents Itself, Follow!

During this 30 Day Challenge it seems that the topic of dreams keeps coming up. That's mainly because I've been reading "How To Be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson and using it as a way into my blog posts. His comments about dreaming and daydreaming are particularly interesting to me because they give me a way to look at my paintings. 

Could it be that my paintings are the manifestations of daydreams? These figures and the setting they are in are dreamlike, are pure imagination, are the stuff dreams are made of. And, if that is the case, then I am winning the challenge to be idle.  

Best part is - it was fun!  

Meet The Challenge: Escape

"Escape" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic Mixed Media on Crescent Board, 20" x 20" 

"They tell us that we have our heads in the clouds, they tell us to stop daydreaming, to stop staring out of the windows." -Tom Hodgkinson

A Challenge To Escape

Leslie Saeta's 30 Day Challenge is really more than just a challenge to paint and to blog every day for 30 days. It's a challenge to artists to do what they love. And it's a challenge to their followers to take time out from their busy work days to do a little bit of daydreaming, to "stare out the window," as Tom Hodgkinson suggests. 

It is very easy to fall back into work mode, even when you are retired and can design your own schedule every day of the week. So, in accepting this challenge, I've also challenged myself to let it feel not like a work challenge but rather an "enjoyment" challenge. 

Experiment

One sure way to escape into making art is to see it as an experiment. In the making of "Escape" I was experimenting with acrylic gel mediums and collage. I love the way crescent board soaks up the paint as well as what happens when gel mediums are applied. I created the structure for this painting many months ago, but cast it aside when it wasn't working. I pulled it out for the challenge, thinking that if I just gave it some time and decided to focus on the words "fun" "enjoy" "love" I would resolve the issues. Before, it was a job. Today, it was fun. 

An Invitation: Look Out The Window

The painting is as much a blank canvas for the viewer as is looking out the window. There are no figures here to lead you into constructing a story. Instead there are just land and sky and water, and oh maybe some life under the water, and maybe some life on that land and beach. Surely, this is what "idle" is all about, a chance to daydream, a chance to let your imagination run free. 

Website Jim Carpenter Fine Art.

Be A Rebel: Daydream

Idle Thoughts by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Paper, 10.25" x 8.25" 

"How the idle at heart suffer for their daydreaming. How cruel the bureaucrats, teachers, and usurers, who tell us our visions and fancies are a waste of time." - Tom Hodgkinson

Meeting the Challenge: On Being Idle, Day 6 

Today is day 6 of Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge. At one point I wondered if I was going to paint at all today. I did my morning running routine - a 37 minute "ramble" in the rain through my neighborhood we call "the forest" for its trees and its creek. I kept thinking about yesterday's post "This is rambling! Pay attention!" Then I made breakfast and we settled into watching 2 episodes of "Homeland." Was I being idle? Yes. Idle so I could better consume an art form - acting, script writing, fiction. Even now I'm listening to a beautiful piece of music - Oblivion - as I create this bit of text.  When I finally decided to get to the painting, I turned on the music, and got to work. I should have timed it, because this painting really did emerge easily. But as I told another artist friend today, these paintings don't happen quickly. They go through a lot before they emerge. This painting had several incarnations before it was obliterated and became "Idle Thoughts." I might liken it to rehearsing a play for 7 weeks before the play finally appears on opening night. Ah, the creative process!

Idle Thoughts: Idle Conversation

I love the tilt of the head in the figure in green. What, I wonder, is he thinking? To my mind he is curious. Contemplative. Questioning.  He's almost looking at that figure sideways, a slight turn of the body under those robes. And when I look at the face on the giant figure I know that this is not a static meeting: the two figures are in communion with one another. That looming spirit is looking back, watching that robed figure with a knowing focus, and perhaps with a bit of amusement. He is another benevolent figure that appears in various guises in my paintings. I'm happy for that. 

It's a good thing these two figures don't have to run off to work at the mill. They can take their time and contemplate whatever the questions might be and pose possible answers. Or not. Maybe they are there to just think and observe.

  

I'm Really An Idle Daydreamer At Heart

So really, what is this all about? The paintings with the figures? The talk about being idle?  I'm "working on" not working. How is that for irony? This is all about having fun not having work. And I'm working on fully owning that I paint what I paint because that is what I paint and I enjoy it. I like to spend time wondering "why" I paint these things - and I like to daydream about where these paintings come from. 

How weird is it that this painting today was hidden in a painting that I cut in half yesterday and rubbed out with alcohol? And how weird is it that the painting fits perfectly with my theme of being idle so you can daydream and contemplate what it means to be in this world? How weird is it that the painting ends up being in sync with my theme? I do not plan ahead of time what I am going to paint and the painting. I look at the paper and look for the painting.  

I think maybe it is not weird at all. I think that it may just be what the creative process is all about.