Worth a Look, Painting as a Pastime

Every now and then I stumble onto a piece of writing that does more than simply inform or entertain; it speaks directly, in agreeable language, to my own interests. This is certainly the case with the slender book Painting as a Pastime, by Winston Churchill.

I was fourteen when Churchill died in 1965, and aside from President Kennedy's assassination, Churchill's death was one of the first in my life that made a big impression. My parents and grandparents, who admired the man from his role in British politics and World War II, talked at length about his character, his military and political accomplishments. But I don't remember them ever mentioning his love of painting, and his artistic side didn't make it into my history lessons.

I came to reading Painting as a Pastime when I mentioned John Ruskin's book The Elements of Drawing, to an artist friend. She recommended Churchill's extended essay, so I ordered in inter-library loan from our excellent Hedberg Library. It's short, only 25 pages of text, and my edition has 18 color plates of his oil paintings in the back. I'm not an art critic. I have no qualifications to decide if Churchill's work would stand the test of time if he weren't a former Prime Minister. That said, I think his paintings are charming, full of life and color, and reflective of what he loved, landscapes, florals, and his beautiful home, Chartwell. What I will remember longer is his joyous voice, speaking to me in 2008 from 1921, when he wrote his essay on the power of painting to refresh and mind and soul.

Here are a few representative passages which I hope inspire to read the essay in its entirety.

"Many remedies are suggested for the avoidance of worry and mental overstrain by persons who, over prolonged periods, have to bear exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties on a very large scale. Some advise exercise, others repose. Some counsel travel and others retreat... But the element which is constant and common in all of them is Change."

"The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man. But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a command of will. The growth of alternate mental interests is a long process. The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on good ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed."

"Broadly 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."

"It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided int two classes: first those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority... But fortune's favored children are the second class. Their life is natural harmony... Yet to both classes the need of an alternative outlook, a change of atmosphere, a diversion of effort, is essential."

"It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The first impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight one, it may be all that can be hoped for. A later and second perusal may recoil from a surface already hardened by premature contact. Young people should be careful in their reading as old people in eating their food."

"Painting is a companion with whom one may hope to walk a great part of life's journey.

 

Age cannot wither her nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
 

One by one the more vigorous sports and exacting games fall away. Exceptional exertions are purchased only by a more pronounced and more prolonged fatigue... But painting is a friend that makes no undue demands, excites no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas a a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude."

"Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost the end, of the day."

"To have reached the age of forty without ever handling a brush or fiddling with a pencil, to have regarded with a mature eye the painting of pictures of any kind as a mystery, to have stood agape before the chalk of a pavement artist, and suddenly to find oneself plunged in the middle of a new and intense form of interest and action with paints and palettes and canvases, and not to be discouraged by results, is an astonishing and enriching experience."

"But if...you are inclined - late in life though it be - to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless extent, then be persuaded that the first quality needed is Audacity. There is really no time for the deliberate approach....We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joyride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket."

"Painting! What are you hesitating about? Let me have a brush --- the big one. Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and white, frantic flourish on the palette --- clean no longer --- then several large fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the absolutely cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it would not hit back... The canvas grinned in helplessness before me. The spell was broken. The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with Berserk fury. I have never felt in awe of a canvas since."

"I write no word of disparagement of water-colours. But there is really noting like oils. You have a medium at your disposal which offers real power, if only you can find out how to use it."

"Just to paint is great fun. You can keep on experimenting. You can change your plan to meet the exigencies of time or weather. And always remember you can scrape it all away."

"One begins to see... that painting a picture is like fighting a battle; trying to paint a picture is, I suppose, like trying to fight a battle. It is, if anything, more exciting than fighting it successfully. But the principle is the same. It is the same kind of problem as unfolding a long, sustained, interlocking argument. It is a proposition which, whether of few of numberless parts, is commanded by a single unity of conception."

"I think this heightened sense of observation of Nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint."

"When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so to get to the bottom of the subject."

"Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body, more entirely absorbs the mind."

"Lastly, let me say a word on painting as a spur to travel. There is really nothing like it. Every day and all day is provided with its expedition and its occupation -- cheap, attainable, innocent, absorbing, recuperative."

Another from the Vintage Photo Drawer

Colored pencil and gouache in my Moleskine sketchbook

Original vintage photo, scanned and enhanced

I'm still interested in experimenting with sketching from vintage photographs. I started with old family photos I scanned, but then discovered a treasure trove of vintage photos of unknown people at a local resale shop. I enjoy rummaging through old pictures, and I find that not knowing the people frees me up to not worry too much about perfect likenesses. I feel no responsibility to make the people attractive, or to be true to the details of the pictures. I love imagining who the people are, what the occasion was, where the picture was taken. In this photo, the man and woman are obviously close, sitting so near one another in the rowboat. Who else was there in the boat with the camera? Are they alive today?

I've tried all sort of approaches to these old pictures. I've used graphite, pen and ink, colored pencil. I begin by scanning and cropping the original picture, then running it off on my printer. Sometimes I adjust the photo in Photoshop Elements, then work from the manipulated picture. That's what I did here. I eliminated the reflections in the water and the waterline, because what I was interested in most was the pattern of darks and lights, the way their heads bend together. I might try another version that shows the mussel shell they are looking at, and shows her boots more clearly, but for now I like this simplified version that emphasizes their closeness.

Squirrel Rant, Year 2

They did it again. I was lulled into security for a couple days, but the furry terrorists attacked my tulips overnight, and today the decapitated blossoms are scattered on the gravel path, on the patio table, and on a bench. It was funny because I took the first picture Sunday afternoon, and considered cutting a bouquet for the dining room table. I decided not to cut any because the flowers were so pretty outside. Wrong decision it seems.

This is not the first time the squirrels have munched their way through my tulips. In fact, they did it last year, and the year before that. I am trying to have compassion for all sentient beings, trying to see the squirrels as part of the great circle of life. But it's hard. Really hard.

In the past we've trapped the critters and given them free transportation to a park several miles away. That worked for a while, but new squirrels always moved into the vacated spots in the neighborhood. I've tried sprinkling moth balls, fox urine, hot peppers, none worked for long.

The trick, apparently, is not to care, to focus on the large clumps of daffodils that bloom in other parts of the garden; evidently daffodils are not as tasty as tulips. I must remember my friend Sloan's mantra, "Serenity now." And maybe next year I can remember to cut the tulips and bring them inside before they become squirrel chow.