In retirement from public office, former President George W.
Bush has taken up painting. On a visit to Jay Leno on TV in November of 2013,
Bush presented Leno with a portrait he had painted and commented that he was
inspired to take up art after reading an essay written by Winston Churchill. The essay
that Bush was referring to is titled “Painting as a Pastime.” I understand that
Bush was not the first President to be inspired by Churchill to take up
painting. Eisenhower was another.
If you’re retired and have not read this little book, I
recommend that you either check it out from your local library or order "PaintingAs a Pastime" on
amazon.
Here is an excerpt:
"Just to paint 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.
"As one slowly begins to escape from the
difficulties of choosing the right colours and laying them on in the right
places and in the right way, wider considerations come into view. One begins to
see, for instance, that painting is like fighting a battle.
"It
is the same kind of problem, as unfolding a long, sustained, interlocked
argument. It is a proposition which, whether of few or numberless parts, is
commanded by a single unity of conception. And we think though we cannot tell
that painting a great picture must require an intellect on the grand
scale.
"There must be that all-embracing view which presents the beginning and
the end, the whole and each part, a one instantaneous impression retentively
and untiringly held in the mind. When we look at the larger Turners - canvases
yards wide and tall – and observe that they are all done in one piece and
represent one single second of time, and that every innumerable detail, however
small, however distant, however subordinate, is set forth naturally and in its
true proportion and relation, without effort, without failure, we must feel in
the presence of an intellectual manifestation the equal in quality and
intensity of the finest achievements of warlike action, of forensic argument,
or of scientific or philosophical adjudication.
"In all battles two things are
usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army
and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve. Both of these are also obligatory upon
the painter. To make a plan, thorough reconnaissance of the country where the
battle is to be fought is needed. Its fields, its mountains, its rivers, its
bridges, its trees, its flowers, its atmosphere – all require and repay
attentive observation from a special point of view.
"One is quite astonished to
find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object it
in, one never noticed before.And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest
which invests every walk or drive with an added object. So many colours on the
hillside, each different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections
in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights gilding
or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose,
orange, green or violet.
"I found myself instinctively as I walked noting the
tint and character of a leaf, the dreamy purple shades of mountains, the
exquisite lacery of winter branches, the dim pale silhouettes of far horizons.
And I had lived for over 40 years without ever noticing any of them except in a
general way, as one might look at a crowd and say, “What a lot of people!”
"I think this heightened sense of observation of Nature is one of the
chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint."
I hope you will read Churchill's essay and maybe you'll be inspired to take up painting also.
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