More on Winston Churchill, the painter.

Earlier, "Levitated Apples" made a comparison between the paintings of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill, demonstrating the British leader's buoyant and fearless artistic style. It says much about the man that he began painting purely as a pastime yet attained a high level of accomplishment.

How did a man with so many other responsibilities succeed in a field requiring as much patience as skill, as much imagination as drafting dexterity?

The answers can be found in a little book which is currently out of print but which might still be available in a used version.
"Painting as a Pastime" is Churchill's invitation to us all to discover the joys of capturing the world in line and colour. Originally published as an essay in his book "Amid These Storms" (New York 1932), it was later extracted as a slim volume which became internationally popular.

ONE FOR YOUR READING LIST.

If you haven't read it, it's one you should put on your reading list. And if you can find an original copy, it's a charming little book to hold and treasure.

With his elegant reasoning and engaging language, Churchill invites the reader to discover painting as an all-absorbing activity providing a respite from stress and overwork.

He particularly encourages those coming to the palette at a later stage in life, urging them (and us) to bypass much of the formality of deliberate study and instead to plunge right into the sheer fun of unrestricted creativity. He urges us to take “a joy ride in a paint box,” one for which “audacity is the only ticket.”

After taking up painting at the age of forty Churchill recalls his first timid experimentation. In 1915, during his initial explorations of the canvas, he recalls that he had just hesitatingly made a sky blue spot 'about as big as a bean' with a tiny brush when a friend, the wife of a painter, drove up. “‘Painting!" she cried. "But what are you hesitating about? Let me have a brush – the big one."

SPLASH! WALLOP! A CLEAN CANVAS NO LONGER!

Then, says Churchill, "Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and the white, frantic flourish on the palette – clean no longer – and then several large, fierce strokes and splashes of blue on the absolutely cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it could not hit back. No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence. The canvas grinned in helplessness before me. The spell was broken.”

It wasn't long before Churchill shared his friend's enthusiasm. His enjoyment embraced everything from the draftsmanship needed to establish the scene to the tactile pleasures of paint itself. “Just to paint," he said, "is great fun. The colours are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing.

Try it if you have not done so – before you die.”

The same could be said of reading this small gem of a book.

Churchill, Winston S., Painting as a Pastime. New York 1965, 52 pages, 18 color plates, 8 1/4 x 5 1/4, hardback