My mother gave me Winston Churchill's essay/book, Painting as a Pastime, for my birthday. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day (p. Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Maybe he got up from the canvas and headed off to meet Stalin or Roosevelt or Hitler and the mindset gathered and re-discovered in the hours of pastime was still there, somehow, now transformed into a vision of a world filled with peace and beauty. It is the "pastime" in the paintings before you that is edifying, that inspires. To say that his hundreds of paintings are good or not so good is to miss the point. More like the strength from care free play is just there, found in you, as if it had been there from the beginning. What builds up in you, strong and solid, in those hours of fun and play that can then withstand what the world throws at you? No, not withstand, because that requires some effort. What happens to you when the blank canvas or the blank page is seen as an invitation to come out and play, just as we are - not Picasso, or Faulkner, but Churchill, and plain, ordinary me and you. What if the ability to enjoy being alone and playing with colors helped him, and could help us, to be good and brave? And what was it about the concentrated observation that painting required that could make a man see all of reality, the good and evil, more clearly? What if you had something in your life that you did for the sake of doing, and if the poplar ended up looking more like a steeple, so be it. What can I tell you about this little book? I read it because I wanted to see the connection between integrity and courage in the public life and leisure and enjoyment in the private life. If you ever get a chance to see an exhibit of Churchill's paintings, you'll see that he was quite good at it. For them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path."Ĭhurchill goes on to explain why painting was just the hobby for him, someone whose job it was to be "worried to death."Ī lovely little book, worth reading both for its advice and for its insight into the mind of a great man. In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. "As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every objet of desire - for them, a new pleasure, a new excitement is only an additional satiation. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the week-end. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week's sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. "To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies.īroadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. This is a lovely little book by statesman and author Winston Churchill about why he took up painting in middle age.
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