I picked up this old book recently at a used book store – a slim volume with a very recognizable figure intent over his easel, paintbrush in hand. Winston Churchill in his own words, illustrated by his own paintings. In it he proselytizes for painting as a hobby, urging everyone to pick up a paint brush – “Try it if you have not done so – before you die”, he says. Yes, ‘before’ would be preferable.

Painting as a Pastime was written in 1932, 15 years after he picked up his first paintbrush at the age of 40. He says that painting came to his rescue at a most trying time. He had been fired from his job of head of the Admiralty (Royal Navy) in 1915 after the disaster at Galipoli and was pretty depressed when he started to paint, a hobby he would continue with for the rest of his life.

It’s a fun read, mostly due to its archaic sounding style and language, the way he presumes to give advice, its play on words and phrases and its humour, not all of it intentional. His descriptions of how painting feels to him ring true for me. He finds great joy in painting, wants to share it with the world and have the world join him in this.

Sir Winston Churchill’s words of wisdom to late starting painters:

The first quality that is needed is audacity. There really is no time for the deliberate approach. Two years of drawing-lessons, three years of copying woodcuts, five years of plaster casts – these are for the young. They have enough to bear…The truth and beauty of line and form which by the slightest touch or twist of the brush a real artist imparts to every feature of his design must be founded on long, hard, persevering apprenticeship and a practice so habitual that it has become instinctive. We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpiece. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.

Or in today’s parlance – just go for it.

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.

…the vistas of possibility are limited only by the shortness of life. Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will ever get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before. And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with an added object…this heightened sense of observation of Nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint.

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 to the end, of the day.

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

Well I don’t know about spending a million years on this but I’ll do it until I don’t.

At the end of this past year I pulled out all the paintings I had done since I started my own “pastime” of painting a year ago February. Turned out there were 47. They had been stacked in the corner and now needed to be put away to make space for the new. It was a blast to see them again and I smiled at the memories of what I had done or, more to the point, tried to do – all experiments, some more successful than others, but each one teaching me something new. I thought it might be a good idea to find a way to go back at some time to see them again, without the hassle of pulling them out of storage – which is only a short term solution anyway. I don’t have a lot of storage space so eventually I’ll have to get rid of them, throw them away. So I got out the camera, took pictures of all of them, recorded details – dates, size, workshop and so on. Then I compiled them all into a photobook, using Blurb his time, and had it printed. Just like that. Sounds simple, no? NO.

But all that work is done and I’m glad I did it. The book looks great and now I can easily look back and smile in memory again just by leafing through the pages. A great record of my own “pastime”. I’m now finishing up another photo book with the New Zealand photos. Sorting, cropping, setting up the pages. The photo book companies claim it is easy to just drop in your photos to their templates, but it’s not. No doubt the more I do it the easier it will get. Like anything. I hope.

I hadn’t painted in a couple of months what with travels and other projects like these ones, but I am now back in The Bunkie Studio these days pushing paint around and loving it once again. As long as I do, I’ll keep at it.

Every painting is practice for the next one.