Chipper Thompson’s coloring book for all ages
His ‘Right-Reverend-Colonel’s Elemental Coloring Book’ employs primordial imagery
LAST WEEK Tempo received its second coloring book by a musician for review during the COVID-19 crisis (after Mark Kemper’s “PopTiks”), prompting a question: Is this a trend we might have missed? We reached out to the author of this latest offering, as as you can see, he had plenty to say on the subject, and then some.
You are primarily known in Taos as a musician, but now we have a coloring book from you – what inspired you to make this?
I am and have been primarily known in Taos as a musician, but one aspect of my musical identity has been the hand-drawn posters I’ve made for years and years for all my gigs. One random day back in 2017 I was doodling and the image of the owl came out – I’m not sure why. It seemed related to my gig posters in some way, but was obviously different. I was planning to “fill in” the feathers and so forth, but then thought it might make a cool image for a coloring book. So, from there I did a few more images, all inspired by nature, and realized that I might have a project on my hands. The whole thing just kind of presented itself to me, and wasn’t really planned at all.
Tell us a little about the choice of imagery.
I’ve never considered myself a very good “naturalistic” artist. My drawings tend toward “flat graphics” without a lot of perspective or shading. Again, this is probably related to my gig posters and the need to simply advertise a performance as directly – but artistically – as possible. Nevertheless, I’m drawn to nature as my safest “comfort zone” and so imagery from nature comes very easily to me. The sun, moon and stars; the ocean and its inhabitants, birds and insects and the trees they live in – all were very straightforward images to come up with.
Coloring books for grownups appear to be a “thing” right now – Mark Kemper (another musician), also produced one recently, “PopTiks.” Is there something therapeutic about coloring in between the lines?
First of all, this isn’t just a coloring book for adults – the images are all safe for kids of any age, and in fact the very first copy was sold to a customer at our local toy store, Twirl. Still, coloring books do seem to be a trend lately. I haven’t actually purchased a coloring book for myself, but I know that when I’m working on a piece of art I go into sort of “Zen place” and I calm down, my breathing slows down and I become very relaxed. I would imagine that happens for people (of any age) coloring, and a relaxed Zen state is something most of us could use these days.
I wonder what Carl Jung would have to say about this phenom?
I’m not overly literate with Jung’s theories, but I know he recognized the power of primordial, highly symbolic imagery, and those are the types of things I chose and drew for the book: snakes, fish, plants, hearts, bones and so on. Hopefully, they’ll fulfill some deep need for connectivity with nature for some of the folks who color these images. Maybe they can’t get outside or live in a city and don’t have direct access to nature. I’ll admit that coloring my drawing of an owl is a poor substitute for actually seeing an owl sitting in a ponderosa pine, but maybe it’ll hold somebody over until they can get to the real thing.
Presumably, you are still making music – anything new in that arena, we should know about?
I am still making music, but mostly only for myself. At the very beginning of COVID-19 quarantine, my wife, Kim Treiber, and I filmed and put on YouTube an original song every day for 100 days, and that was fun and we got a great response from it. I’ve got three different musical projects I’m working on (mostly in my own mind) at the moment, but I’m not in any mood to rush them. I’ll record them at home as the mood strikes, and eventually – hopefully within the next year or so – at least one of them will be ready for public consumption. I do miss playing live, but we really need to dig in this autumn and try our best to stay aware of this pandemic and get past it by continuing to sociallydistance. Then, if we all do our part, next spring ... live music again!
Tell us about the book’s title.
The title (“The Right-Reverend-Colonel’s Elemental Coloring Book”) comes from a nickname that two different sets of friends independently gave me, almost verbatim of one another. I’ve adopted it, and “The Colonel” has almost become a character with his own odd, steam-punky backstory. Something about this project made me connect the two, strange as it is, and there you have it.
The “The Right-Reverend-Colonel’s Elemental Coloring Book” is available on Amazon. Locally, it is currently in stock at the Brodsky Bookshop, Unicorn School Supply and Stationery, Twirl and Jack Leustig’s Fine Art New Mexico.