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.  

Would You Accept Flowers From A Loafer?

"Floral III" by Jim Carpenter, Watercolor on Yupo, 26" x 20"

"Talking, sharing ideas and stories with friends old and new, this is the lifeblood of the loafer." 

- Tom Hodgkinson

Day 30 Challenge:  Blogging & Painting & Loafing

For the last four days I have been trying to get this blog post posted, but every day I ran out of time, for all of the talking, story telling, and story listening. On Friday my Irish cousin and his wife arrived on our doorstep on the last leg of a two month road trip covering 8,000 miles. Do you think we had a lot of story telling to do?  The talking stopped only long enough for us to catch our breath between phrases. After they left we went to the movies, then watched a great film at home. On Sunday we went to see a brilliant production of  "The Cripple of Inishmaan" staged by the theatre department at The University Of Florida.  Yesterday, I was writing my blog post when I received an email from my colleague at the co-op saying "I'm stuck in traffic but on my way" and then I looked at the time and realized I had just 2 minutes left before I was to meet her at the parking lot where she was to pick me up for the drive out to the gallery for the meeting. If you have ever been in a co-op and it is anything like mine you know there was a lot of talking going on. In other words, if what Hodgkinson says has any truth to it, these last few days I have been in loafer's paradise!

What a month this has been!

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?  

Late Day 22: An Idle Excuse, Day 23

Floral II by Jim Carpenter, Watercolor on Yupo, 26" x 20"

"And there are new enemies of leisure today." - Tom Hodgkinson

Revision Mania: What Happens When Leisure Is Under Attack!

This was painted on Day 22 - but there was no time to photograph it and post it. So here it is, sans much writing and posted on Day 23. Maybe I'll add to the post at a later date!

Briefly, this painting is the second in a series of florals I'm painting on Yupo. I will surely write more about them as I present them, but the story behind this one is that I did not start it as part of the challenge, but rather ended up totally revising a painting I painted back in March. If, back in March,  I had painted the floral on traditional watercolor paper I'd not have been able to "revise" it in the same way. Actually, I pretty much obliterated the original bouquet, and save for the vase, this is a totally different painting from what it was. That's the magic of Yupo.

Since it is a wholly new painting, I decided to put it in for Day 22, but then "Leisure" was under attack and so, now it is being posted for day 23 of the Challenge. What can I say other than, I am enjoying the challenge and painting on Yupo is a total blast!

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!  

Being Idle in Paradise

"Landscape" by Jim Carpenter, Mixed Acrylic Media on Crescent Board, 6 " x 11" 

"I count it as a certainly that in paradise, everyone naps." - Tom Hodgkinson

Day 20: Day 19 Cut Out

Ok, so today is day 20 of the 30 day challenge and day 19 came and went without my posting a panting or a bit of prose.  I didn't paint yesterday. But I did get into the studio. And I made this painting by cutting away about 200 sq inches.  

They say "Sleep on it" when you need to get some distance on a decision, and I slept on this for about 2 years. Even Hodgkinson would agree that is a pretty long nap. But yesterday, I knew I had one painting with a lot of excess baggage attached to it, and so I took mat corners and looked for the best crop. Today I took the painting to the framer.  

Speaking of napping, I decided at about 7 pm, after teaching my Friday night Chi Kung class, that I was going to be idle for the rest of the evening and head to the snoozer early. It meant that I would not blog and I would not paint. I think that to do so, last night, would have felt like work and that would really defeat the purpose and intent of my 30 straight days of painting and blogging.  I am doing this to reclaim the joy of painting and writing - and as I wrote earlier - I'm the boss of my idleness. I make up my own rules. And yes, I am having a good time at this.  

I think this little landscape is very much a cousin of my usual process of "finding the painting" - in this instance instead of rubbing out another painting I cropped this one out of a larger one.  Cutting out the excess to find the painting inside.  So I'm including it in the challenge. After all, it really didn't exist until yesterday when I cut away the excess.  

But Wait! Two Days In One!

Have you seen those commercials for back scratchers? Just as you think they are over they shout "But Wait" and announce that if you buy one for $19.95 they will send you a second back scratcher for free.  Well, here's my "But Wait!"  The excess of the painting is Landscape Part II. This one I did have to tweak with some painting. I'm not complaining because I loved doing it.  So, here is the painting for Day 20.  

Landscape II by Jim Carpenter, Mixed Media on Crescent Board, 12 3/4" x 13 1/4"

The Questions Of An Idle Mind: Ah Mystery!

"Between Worlds" by Jim Carpenter, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 20" x 28" 

Dreamers "are told to start living in 'the real world.' We might ask, though: what is this 'real world,' exactly?" - Tom Hodgkinson   

Entertaining Questions

It is the dreamer who both entertains questions and is entertained by them. What does it mean to "live in the real world"? What is the real world? What is the dream world? What does it mean to be "between worlds"?

I begin with this series of questions only because I don't really want to write too specifically about the painting. I can't. It asks questions of me and suggests paths of thought for me – it prompts thinking about many things: perhaps long-held beliefs, or various states of mind, or personal history, or ancestry. Where it came from remains a mystery to me, but I sense that it is the stuff of dreams I have not yet unravelled. 

I love a mystery. It is mystery after all that keeps one locked into the quest. And as long as there is a quest there will be questions to entertain.

"Between Worlds" is painting #18 in the 30 Day Challenge. All of these paintings are on my website, Jim Carpenter Fine Art, in one gallery, "On Being Idle."  I hope you will stop by and look at the Idle paintings as well as my other works.