Famous People and Simple Paintings

Written by Joseph Hobbs

Today I would like to discuss an example of an individual, one you may have heard of who used art to combat their depression. This was not a professional artist, but someone who taught themselves to paint just as you or I would. By sitting in their garden, painting pictures to instil a sense of peace within their mind, they used art as both hobby and self-medication, in the interest of raising their mental state. 

This hobbyist’s name was Winston Churchill.

Churchill’s depression, the ‘black dog’, as he called it followed him throughout his entire life. Through his childhood, military service, literary career, and during the heights of the Second World War depression always remained something Churchill faced and helped defeat by using the possibilities of creative art.

Now these paintings themselves can be found easily on the internet, and looking at them you might see something that you yourself, a friend or a relative could have made. And I believe this is part of the point, something uplifting and worth remembering when you look at them and consider them. Despite being a famous figure, in this Churchill is no different to anyone else. His paintings did not come from education or barriers which we cannot cross. He knew as much about painting as anyone, teaching himself, painting for fun, working on his art and giving it away purely for the pleasure of making it as the day went by. 

A nice little painting just of the countryside, a lake, the plant life which he could see and put down. Rather than being caught in the political world, what he showed artistically and allowed to come into his mind was casual paintings of the natural world. In these paintings we can see something calm. Soothing. But the act of it, that hobby of watching the immediate landscape, using paint, your hands, and your own eye to put that down is all something that you, reading this are capable of. That calm can be found in creating a painting, and long after as you look at it, or perhaps give it away to somebody else to enjoy. By taking that time for yourself, simply to create and seek out a peace, then you remove yourself from stresses and have a place where anxieties and external difficulties are replaced by a wonderful simplicity. Instead of all the bustle of the outer world, there is only what your eyes can see. Rather than what you may worry about being able to face, there is just the view, the painting, and something that you certainly will have done.

Examples of positives in people throughout history can give a lot of us the courage or insight to try things ourselves, and I thought it was a good idea to share this with you as an example of something you can practice whenever you like, even today. By creating art from a place of positivity, in attempting removal from the storm, from the ‘black dog’, from your troubles.