The Angel Sang: "Keep it Real"

"Angel 1" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Paper, 6.5" x 4.5"

The Nature of Challenge Day One: One Begets Another

Usually I do one painting for my Christmas cards, photograph it, take it to the printer and have copies made, and then fix them to card stock and off they go. This year (who knows what possessed me) I decided to paint individual cards. I had been through a great 30 day Challenge with Leslie Saeta in September and maybe that fed the notion that I could paint 84 paintings for cards this year. My rationale went something like this:

1) It will take the pressure off of having to come up with ONE perfect painting in a few days

2) It will save me $80 in printing costs

3) I will get to paint a lot 

4) After they are mailed all of the paintings will be gone

5) Some people will think I am crazy and that is good for my image

It was all good. But nothing is perfect, and by Dec. 22 I was in a crunch.  

The Problem With The Process: The Product

I was very focused in the painting. It never quite resembled a production line but I had a number of themes going. 1) Red and Green Joy - 2) Snowflakes - and 3) Angels.  My main theme for all of them was Joy - but at some point I knocked out 5 angels - the first of the 5 is shown here. The painting was fun. Laying all the paintings out and counting them was fun. Trying different things in each painting was fun. I was being idle in the most enjoyable way. And when the painting was done and there was nothing left to do but actually attach the painting to the card stock and put it in an envelope I turned into a disinterested loafer. 

Once again I am reminded that it is the creative process that draws me to painting. It is the opportunity to use paint for self expression that drives the art making - not the final product.  

I was up until about 3 a.m. on Dec. 23 putting the cards into the envelopes. And at that time I hatched a plan for 2015 - paint the cards all year long - don't wait until December to start. Have the envelopes addressed by August, and maybe in 2015 there will be time to put up a tree.  

 2015 Challenge: Paint Your Heart Out

So probably you are wondering what any of this has to do with the current 30 day challenge I am taking on. Well, first of all, I'm pretty busy this month and I know there will be days when I cannot paint. I was going to paint today but needed some way of easing into it - like figuring out how I was going to connect the 30 days to my practice.  

As usual, I have a number of unfinished paintings waiting to be "done" - and hopefully the challenge of painting everyday will lead to working on finishing some of the more demanding pieces I have in progress. On the other hand, I want to celebrate, to practice some joyfulness, to experiment with some abstracts, experiment with some pigments - and would like the 30 days to be the jumping off place for a year of painting whatever my heart desires - or thinks it desires. 

I decided to post the angel for day one because I just came off a challenge of my own making - 84 paintings. It's sort of cheating by not doing a painting today - I'm borrowing from last week. But reviewing my card paintings today served as an inspiration for the January challenge -  I know I can do a 4.5" x 6.5" painting a day.  Here is a small sample created on PicMonkey (cropped images) of some of the paintings I did in December.

In this 30 day challenge I will continue my series of 4.5" x 6.5" paintings, and more. My focus will be on keeping it real - painting from the heart - being fearless in my quest for meaning and self-expression. 

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.

At Your Leisure

The Clearing by Jim Carpenter, Watercolor, 15” x 22” 

$285 - to purchase click here

Tomorrow I will join in Leslie Saeta’s 30 Day Challenge – a painting and a blog post a day for 30 days. Artists from all over the world are signing up to take on the challenge. My theme this year is “On Being Idle: Getting Back To The Garden.”

“Do this, do that, do this, do that, and then do this. Ok?”

When I retired from teaching, I envisioned myself leading a life of leisure.  I imagined reading a lot of novels, going to the beach and the pool, and maybe hanging out with artists and doing some painting. Now, painting is a huge part of my life and it seems at times to have taken on the characteristics of a relentless demanding job, with tons of issues and a boss who can be a bit of a tyrant.

Ha! I know. As my sister-in-law laughingly reminded me yesterday over a leisurely  breakfast at the cafe, “But Jimmy, you are doing this to yourself!” I know! I am the boss of me.  If I don’t have time to finish the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Goldfinch, it is no one’s fault but my own. If I don’t make time to go to the pool on a beautiful hot day, it’s my own fault. If I can’t stand up to the boss, then who can?

Creativity coach Mark McGuinness astutely recommended that I take a look at Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Idle. It is a wonderfully intelligent and wonderfully subversive work on “work.” I plan to use Hodgkinson’s book, at least for starters, as a guide for my blog posts to help me reflect on what it is like to paint and what my motivation for painting really is.  Since reflection leads to new understanding and new knowledge, I expect that I will learn something in the process of painting and writing. And since my blog posts are most often reflections they fit perfectly into the realm of leisure – we must have leisure time in order to reflect.

Is it not possible that my paintings are reflections? I think so. Perhaps I have just laid the path for getting back to the garden.

Notes on the painting: “The Clearing” is one of my earlier works. I entered it in a show in Live Oak, FL a number of years ago and after the show I was offered the chance to put it in a nice gallery/gift shop in a nearby town. I failed to keep an eye on it and discovered that the painting had disappeared and the owner of the shop had no recollection of it. Years later the painting was uncovered and returned to me. I chose it for this blog post because were it not for leisure it would not exist. It had been a particularly wet spring, and we knew that the wildflowers were in bloom. So two artists and I piled into a car on Mother’s Day and drove off into the countryside looking for fields to paint. 

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The Metaphor

"Summer Blues" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Paper, 15" x 11"

Risk Taking Made Easy

I could write about how brave I was back in 2010 to risk such a free-for-all of color as I see in this painting. I was painting the hydrangea blossoms the way I really saw them - bursting with color and to my mind demanding more mid value color to surround them. It is a bold painting, that's for sure. Nothing subtle about it. Cadmium Red, Metallic Gold, Brilliant Blue.  Every now and then you really do need to let loose.  

But it really wasn't all that risky. How big is the risk if you never show the painting?

Timing Is Everything

Clearly this painting came before I got into the knack of rubbing out all of the color, but not long before.  "Summer Blues" is another transitional painting on the cusp of the floral painter slinking into the underground while the figure painter came out to take center stage.  You can tell by the signature, the use of the original stamp I made, and the introduction of metallic gold paint.  You'll see echoes of this painting in the new collection of florals I'm introducing in the near future. A single vase.  Impressions of flowers.  Low horizon suggested by just a line.  I expect with time these elements will morph into something new.

This was among the last "hydrangeas in a vase" images I painted - years earlier I produced a series of paintings based on the hydrangeas that grew in my cousin Richard's garden - shrubs that towered over me and produced huge blossoms ranging in color from deep blue to purple and some rusty orange where the petals began to die. To stand in front of those shrubs was to be bathed in rich color.  I must have taken a hundred photos of those flowers. None of them came close to satisfying me - they all fell short of my experience of the beauty in those flowers.

How do you capture or express the lived experience of being in the presence of the flowers? I think that is really what "Summer Blues" is all about.  This painting is my metaphor for what it is like for me to experience the beauty of flowers. 

It's Never Too Late To Risk It

"Summer Blues" had one outing into to the public - for a couple of hours. I did not have an opportunity to show it again, since I had stopped painting florals. And so now I am taking the risk by writing about it and by posting it on my blog - and tweeting it - and putting it on Pinterest - and on my website in a new gallery "Florals" where the painting is available for $185. [UPDATE 7/27/2014 Painting has now been sold.]

My Guilty Pleasure: Painting Flowers

"Grace" by Jim Carpenter, Watercolor, 15" x 11"

As my friend, artist Sandra Hadley, pointed out, “Sometimes it's refreshing to just celebrate beauty for its own sake.” And that observation by Sandra helps me to understand to some degree my love for painting florals. And, in my quest for living a joy-filled life, I have decided that it is time to indulge in some flora-abundance. 

For the next few days I’m going to publish some of my florals here on my blog. I am also making them available in my store on Zatista. I am bringing these paintings back into the light of day, in part because they stand for my own leap back into claiming my own voice (“I like to paint flowers!”) and in part because they lead the way for a new collection of floral paintings.

I painted “Grace” in 2008, long before I knew what a blog was and shortly before I discovered qigong and painting with acrylics, both of which turned me away from painting florals and turned me toward painting from an interior rolodex. “Grace,” as well as several of the others that will follow, is perhaps the beginning of my letting go of the need to paint from a reference.  Here I just painted from the heart – no photo reference – no flower or vase in front of me.  This painting has never been on exhibit, not because I didn’t want to show it, but because I was caught up in changing my image from “the guy who paints florals” to someone else entirely. 

Now, since this is my blog and this is my life, I think I can paint florals any time I want, and talk about it. 

  

Honor the Creative Spirit

 "Honor" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Paper, 9 1/2" x 6 1/2"

Painting #4 in my day 7 of Leslie Saeta's 30 in 30 Challenge.

When I looked at the finish my first thought was "this is about honor." So I titled it "Honor" and see it as a logical sequence in a line of titles: Seek, Pause, Endure, and now Honor.  I always make an effort not to box a painting in with a title because I want the viewers to be free to create their own story from what they see.  In that sense visual art is collaborative.

As I look at the painting now I see that I pulled the composition out of my theatre bag.  I really didn't think about it at all when I was in the midst of the creative process.  But, I spent decades directing plays and exploring story-telling by moving people from one place to another in a big empty space, and so I shouldn't be surprised to see that experience informing me now.  They say, "Paint what you know" and I say, "If you paint intuitively, you have no choice but to paint what you know.  You cannot do otherwise.  In fact, you may discover what you know by simply painting from the heart."

I've said previously that I believe in "not knowing" and perhaps that is why I view my paintings as vehicles for informing me about the stories that really matter to me and would remain untold were I not to paint.

I sometimes will look at a painting long after I'm done and I say, "Oh, so that's what matters to me!"

Do you find yourself creating meaning when you look at the figures in this painting?  What is going on in the scene?  I'd love to hear your stories.