Back Garden Stills 7, Aylesford

Watched an excellent arts programme called Becoming Matisse. It was about his early life, his beginnings as an artist and the finding of his creative spirit.
As he grew up his father wanted him to take over the family grain business which he really did not want to do, so he was sent to train as a lawyer instead (which he detested). His salvation came from his mother who presented him with a small set of oil paints. I love his quote about this, to him it was "like a cow first given a sight of grass". Isn't that just wonderful! He'd found what he was looking for, that thing that brought meaning to his life.
He often struggled for money and sometimes suffered critical backlashes of his artworks but he was determined to carry on because of his love of painting, it was part of his soul. What I admire most about him was his refusal to give up or be cowed. He took inspiration from many sources including his children, I think he recognised and grabbed hold of their carefree attitude to being creative and not following rules.
Maybe we all need to be like that a bit more, hence I decided to go for it with today's image. Photography to me, when I first came across it in a very potent form at a W.Eugene Smith exhibition many years ago, became my version of my first sight of grass. That amazement at seeing something so powerfully brilliant has never left me and I was hooked from that moment.