Inspiring Words

[Paul Whybrow]

I've just started reading a biography about abstract painter Terry Frost, who lived and worked in Cornwall for much of his life.

I've always liked his cheerful, colourful paintings, and he was a friendly and popular man who did much to encourage others.

In the introduction to Terry Frost: A Painter's Life, the author Roger Bristow mentions that, for many years, Frost had a translation of a quotation by Matisse pinned to one of his studio walls:

"Draw happiness from oneself, from a good day's work, from the light it can bring to the fog that surrounds us."

Think..."that was the best time."

Authors are just as solitary as painters, and it struck me that Matisse's observation is how we should consider our day of writing.

 

[Rich.]

I love this, Matisse's quote. When I write it's often frustrating, painful, full of self doubt. Running's like that too, grimacing, grinding, burning. But you remember what is was to tell stories as a child, to run and run, long after Mum'd called you in for tea. Boundless fun. Isn't that why we do it?

--

In What Is to Be done?, Tolstoy said, 'The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labour.' [I imagine he might have said people instead of men were he alive today, but we'll forgive him his century, won't we?]