Happy Accidents

You may be tired of posts about art, but I hope you'll hang in there for just one more!

After viewing the Jackson Pollock exhibit recently, we had about thirty minutes before we had to leave the museum for our lunch reservation. We asked the docent how he recommended we spend our last few minutes, and he sent us upstairs to the Reves collection piquing our interest by telling us that some of the items in the collection originally belonged to Coco Chanel. We zipped upstairs and wandered through the exhibit. Then, totally by accident, we walked into a tiny, little room that contained the art of Winston Churchill!! 

I had listened to an biography about Winston Churchill on my way to Mobile last summer. I am a huge fan of his and adore some of his many witty quotes, but I had no idea that he was an artist. Ron Cynewulf  Robbins, in his article entitled Churchill As Artist - Half Passion, Half Philosophy, writes:

"Churchill was forty before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world—a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics."

It was such a happy accident to stumble on some of his paintings as well as other personal memorabilia! 

Winston Churchill's oil paints.

Cigars, walking cane, telegrams

Thank goodness for life's happy accidents!!

Love ya'll,

Shelli

Churchill quotes:

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.