Artist Helena Renwick’s 30-in-30 painting challenge also raised funds for hospital

What passion would you give yourself permission to pursue every day, if you could?

For Helena Renwick, the answer to that question is paint. After her husband, Cameron, gave her Carol Marine’s Painting a Day for Christmas she decided to embark on a 30-day challenge to complete a painting every single day.

“I felt as though she was talking directly to me,” Helena wrote on her blog about the book that inspired the project. “The message, stop procrastinating and start painting, every day! I went to art school, didn’t learn as much as I should have…spent more time on the theories behind art and not learning the basics.”

Beginning on January 3, she painted one small painting – 6-inches by 6-inches or 8-inches by 8-inches – a day in oil, a medium she hasn’t used in more than 20 years. To keep herself accountable, she committed to posting each one to her Facebook page.

Part of the challenge of a project like this is embracing whatever comes up, imperfections and all, as Helena learned on day three. On that day she wrote, “Today wasn’t easy to paint and it didn’t feel right at all. The painting is muddy and grey, (a) sure sign of over working it… I wanted to try again but didn’t have the time, and part of this project is to show the progress every day as well as the setbacks. Difficult to post a picture that you don’t love but it’s part of the process.”

Even if the artist felt some weren’t perfect, those who saw them online loved them and Helena soon had people offering to buy the paintings. Cameron and their son, Iain, built the frames for all 30 paintings to ready them for their new owners. As a way to give back, Helena decided to donate 20 per cent of the sales to the Huntsville Hospital Foundation. By the time her one-night show at The Other Side Studio arrived on February 10, many of the paintings had already been sold with most of the others selling that night.

“It has been an incredible journey for me to go from day one to day 30,” Helena told friends and family at the show. “It was a year ago in January that I had been diagnosed with cancer and was having surgery and convalescing. This is such a great turnaround for me personally just to do all of this and to have all of you here tonight just warms my heart.”

And she’ll carry on, not with the daily challenge but with painting for sure, even accepting commissions for those who spotted a painting online that they wanted to call their own only to find it was sold before the show. “This is the first time I’ve done this,” said Helena. “People said, ‘here, take my money.’ I’m sorry if you didn’t get the painting you wanted. I’d love to keep painting.”

Don’t miss out on Doppler! Sign up for our free, twice-weekly newsletter here.