Plato’s Forms and Dōgen’s Particular in my painting practice

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

Much of this essay was later abandoned in relation to a research framework for my practice. Yet, some threads did get pulled through and it is worth it to me to have these rough ideas for further reflection going forward.

First written Sunday, 5 January 2025 and rewritten Wednesday, 12 February 2025

I begin with releasing my mind and body towards observing my subject and the things I have selected to observe, in this case the sea floor at the point where the land and sea meet. In doing this repetitively for months and years, I have noticed that I have a strong sense of inner peace as I get low to the ground and spend time with the shapes of seashells, bits of sticks, rocks and the water of the sea. This sensation is influenced not just by the shapes I see but equally by the smells, sounds, textures and rhythmic movement of the sea as I employ my whole full body and mind to these sensory experiences. Past experiences trickle into the present experience. I have layered ideas about what all the days of the sea floor where I am looking have in common. John Daido Loori (1931-2009) in The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artist Life suggests that I resist these generalizations and seek to observe with full attention what is specific in this moment. Loori uses the example of picking weeds in a garden by approaching “each weed as the first weed and the last weed of your life”. (Loori, 2005, p.75) To do this, I come back to my breath and I release all notions of what I think I know and I observe again as if it is my first experience. This is not a pure practice of perfection but rather a continuous repeating practice of observation. When I feel my thoughts drifting to what I think I know, I stop and start over observing again. 

John Daido Loori was a Zen Buddhist rōshi (old teacher/master) and abbot (priest) who had the distinction of being one of three western dharma holders of both the Zen lineages of Eihei Dōgen’s Sōtō beginning in 1986 and Linji Yixuan’s Rinzai beginning in 1997. Loori was the founder of Zen Mountain Monastery and the Mountains and Rivers Order and served as their guiding teacher for almost 30 years. Loori’s nature photography was shown in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York and his work has been published in Aperture and Time-Life. (Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2023) Beginning in 1971, Loori also studied under photographer Minor White, who taught at the California School of Fine Arts beginning in 1946 at the invitation of Anzil Adams. (Loori, 2005, Wikipedia, 2020)

Since 2009, in my painting practice, I am clear about how I apply Loori’s Zen theory of seeing with the whole body and mind and moving through this awareness to be able to function in the ordinariness of our lives. (Loori, 2005, pp. 67-81) For me, this is about exploring the purpose of life through my painting practice. However, there is another whole school of western thought about the value of painting and art that begins with Plato and is frequently referenced when discussing art theory. (Cornelius, 2022, Gould, 2009, Rudd, 2022) In Plato’s theory, Forms are viewed as the ultimate reality compared to everything we experience through our senses which are a false copy of the ultimate reality of Forms. For Plato, paintings are further flawed as a copy or representation of a copy and therefore a poor imitation of reality and hence not particularly useful to furthering knowledge or understanding the truth. Using Plato’s theory of Forms, as it is discussed in Book 10 of the Republic, a painting doesn’t give us the thing itself but a poor copy from one perspective of a reflection or shadow of the thing itself. (Rudd, 2022, pp.18-19) Do these two theories have anything in common? Could one or both of these ways of thinking be useful in my painting practice where my intent is to paint the sea floor in such a manner as to translate my sense of inner peace, well-being and resilience in its presence? After all, these two philosophies come from different times and different cultural values and circumstances. However, both theories have long histories of influences on how humans engage in the act of living which includes the making of paintings. I am neither a master of Zen Buddhism nor a scholar of Plato. I am a humble painter of land and sea wishing to explore what is happening in my making practice. I seek to understand why I do what I do and determine if it is of value and important to pursue. To do this I must come back again to my painting practice. 

As discussed, in order to identify the art theory that currently applies to my practice, I start with the Loori’s Zen theory of seeing with the whole body and mind and then moving through to ordinary life. After a time (usually 10 to 30 minutes), I include my camera and video recording practice into my observation practice. I then take my memory of these experiences and my reference information to my home studio. The exception to this is when I choose to stay and paint in the moment en plein air on location. In both situations the process of painting is similar, I consider my composition, the intention for my painting and then pull in my memory and reference be it photographic, video or still in front of me if I am painting on location. I set out my pigments in a muscle memory pattern in my palette. I take a long deep breath while standing at the easel and begin without thought or reason while holding the intention deep within the core of my being and releasing it to the universe in such a way that I paint with my whole body and mind through to my ordinary life. I have painted long enough that many of the critical decisions one must make do not require effort. It could possibly compare to how we drive as an experienced driver where we know our vehicle and can shift gears, stop and start and turn again and again until we get to our destination while placing our intention on inner peace, the beauty of the day and the traffic and what our friend is saying sitting in the passenger seat beside us. We can come back to our breath again and again, bringing our attention to the wholeness of all that is while moving through our awareness to the specific aspects of driving. This is what painting is like for me. The paintings are therefore significant and important as a practice for living a better life and sharing that better life with others through both their process of making and in the thing that is left behind. Painting is a painting that is the act of painting, breath by breath, brushstroke by brushstroke in an attempt to get to the essence of the subject and the essence of myself which are the same and part of the whole of oneness. A key aspect to my process is imperfection because if I were able to do this practice perfectly, I would reach enlightenment and no longer have need of a physical body to live my ordinary life. Therefore, the importance of practice is both the beginning and the end. Practice is the result that is repeated until one can no longer practice… until the breath only remains an exhale. At present, this is my painting practice. 

What Plato offers in the theory of Forms in relation to painting comes from a different perspective and way of thinking than Zen theory of mind, body and seeking enlightenment. The challenge for Plato with painting from his perspective is that it encourages us to focus on the representation of the thing rather than the thing itself and further he believed that it encourages desires and passions that let these rule over intellect and logic, resulting in art being dangerous to the state of the Republic taking us away from the true ultimate nature of the thing. (Plato and Jowett, 1994) Plato is considering whether painting has value and serves an intellectual use or purpose. 

In Plato’s theory, the physical realm is flawed and changing and so is that which we see and experience through our sensory systems. The spiritual realm is the constant and unchanging perfect Forms and ideas, and is that which we cannot see. (p.131-137 Cornelius, 2022) In considering Plato’s theory in relation to my painting practice of the sea floor, Plato would view it an inferior copy in my physical realm that I wish to make a representation of or a copy of a copy to explore or instil inner peace, well-being and resilience through the practice of painting and viewing the resulting paintings. Inner peace, well-being and resilience cannot be seen and are abstract ideas and might possibly be considered Forms in the theory of Plato’s spiritual realm. From this theoretical position, Plato might say to me – painter, don’t let your passion and desire for painting this physical land and sea distract you from your rational wisdom in seeking inner peace, wellbeing and resilience directly. My most immediate answer to Plato would be that my heart always wins… and there goes the good of the Republic with every brushstroke. So why do it? The answer seems to be in the human innate desire to share. Rational thoughts about ideal Forms are difficult for me to share without the language of paint. My best learning in this human body is accomplished by doing and experiencing my physical realm and sharing it with others through my conversations with land and sea in the expressive language of paint. This is then where Dōgen Zenji (1200 – 1253)  and Zen Buddhism meet with Plato (424/423 – 348 BC) in my painting practice. Carol S. Gould explores the differences and similarities of these two philosophies in relation to literature. However, her research is useful to make similar connections between the two thinkers and my painting practice:

For Dōgen, enlightenment requires meditation and attentive sensitivity to the details of daily life, whereas for Plato, enlightenment requires intellectual dialogue, contemplation of abstract concepts, and ignoring quotidian tasks and details. Both thinkers begin from the same point, namely, skepticism about the phenomenal world and the precision of natural language. (Gould, 2009, p.170)

Both Dōgen and Plato caution against perceptual error or that things may not be as they appear to be. (Gould, 2009, p.175) However, in my painting practice, this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t study the phenomenal world. It only means we should do so knowing that we could be tricked or our observations can contain observed falsehoods that must be exposed and examined. In this way, both approaches to knowledge and practices for living a life may offer insight into how I approach my painting practice.

Both writers, however, use paradox in their work, and it is the confrontation with paradox that both poets find necessary for enlightenment. So, one must use poetry in order to abandon it. For both, then, the poet’s aesthetic ability is key to engaging the audience members and then to persuading them to reject the aesthetic in order to gain enlightenment. For Plato and Dōgen alike, the poet can guide the audience away from the aesthetic by using paradox. (p. 173 Gould, 2009)

Gould goes on to explain that:

Plato rhetorically leads us beyond the words and texts to increasingly abstract levels of understanding until we reach the limits of language, and, all being well, have a rationally intuitive grasp of the Forms. This is a theory of reality consisting of unchanging, eternal elements, each of which is self-sufficient. Plato takes it as axiomatic that the knowing self is distinct from what is known. Numerical plurality is therefore real for Plato. Dōgen rhetorically makes us look closely at the world of particularity so as to intuit the oneness and fluidity of reality and the illusion of the separateness of our egos. He therefore denies the duality between consciousness and the object. (p.174 Gould, 2009)

If I conclude that there is a usefulness, which I do, in continuing to explore these two theoretical approaches in relation to painting, what could this mean for my painting practice? To assist me in answering this question, I shall begin with Anthony Rudd and his book Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter (2022)

When I return to my reading, I am going to explore these text further: 

Rudd, A. (2022) Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter, Oxford University Press eBooks. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192856289.001.0001.

Turner, M. (2006) The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, academic.oup.com. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/book/5920 (Accessed: 5 January 2025).

In addition, I want to identify how our human perception and sensory thresholds are limited and flawed as identified in my rough notes and links below: 

Art and brain: insights from neuropsychology, biology and evolution

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2815940

“In evolutionary terms, we can only speculate on the selective pressures that have shaped the human brain in a direction that forged the practice of art. Art and language share a reliance on symbolic cognition but they could have developed and been selected through staggered and separate evolutionary paths. With the available data, no single brain region, pathway or cerebral hemisphere can explain the brain/art relationship. By contrast, it has been possible to ascertain language localization in the left hemisphere. This is partly due to the fact that art is a complex system where single definable units are not amenable to formulation, unlike those of language. Nevertheless, review of the current evidence from artists with brain damage suggests that artistic talent, skill and creativity are supported by wide brain areas, and are greatly resistant to brain damage.”

Art and Perception: Using Empirical Aesthetics in Research on Consciousness

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9222703

Sensory Thresholds: What They Are And How They Define Our Perception 

https://psychologyfor.com/sensory-thresholds-what-they-are-and-how-they-define-our-perception/

Humans cannot hear all sound 

“…we have known for a long time that in terms of range of frequencies and sensitivity to quiet sounds, a human would not win the top prize in a “spot-the-sound” competition against other animals. There would likely be another animal that could spot a quiet sound more easily than us! However, we now know that human hearing is more frequency selective than other animals. So perhaps we could win the inter-species “spot-the-difference-between-sounds” competition!”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10353771

Humans cannot see everything there is to see 

https://www.physicsgurus.com/61703/is-there-anything-around-but-cant-see-them-through-human-eyes

“There are many things around us that we cannot see with the naked human eye. Our eyes are sensitive to a limited range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, which we perceive as visible light. However, the electromagnetic spectrum extends far beyond the range of visible light, and there are various forms of radiation and particles that are invisible to us.

Here are a few examples:

  1. Infrared and Ultraviolet Light: Infrared radiation has longer wavelengths than visible light, and ultraviolet radiation has shorter wavelengths. Both types of radiation are invisible to the human eye, but they can be detected using specialized instruments or cameras.
  2. X-rays and Gamma Rays: X-rays and gamma rays are high-energy electromagnetic radiation that can pass through most objects, including our bodies. They are used in medical imaging and other applications, but they are invisible to our eyes.
  3. Radio Waves: Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with long wavelengths. They are used for communication, such as radio and television broadcasts, but they are not visible to us without the aid of technology.
  4. Microorganisms: There are numerous microscopic organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. We can only observe them through the use of microscopes.
  5. Dark Matter: Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. It is believed to make up a significant portion of the universe’s mass, but it cannot be directly observed.

These examples illustrate that our perception of the world is limited by the capabilities of our senses and the instruments we use to extend our observations beyond what is visible to us.”

What are the limits of human vision? BBC 2015 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150727-what-are-the-limits-of-human-vision

What percentage of all smells can humans smell? 

Humans have greater capacities for smell than previously speculated https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/human-nose-can-distinguish-between-one-trillion-different-smells-180950175/

Reference List:

Cornelius, A. (2022) ART AS IMITATION IN PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL, ResearchGate. unknown. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359258116_ART_AS_IMITATION_IN_PLATO (Accessed: 5 January 2025).

Eihei Dogen (2022) Dogen’s Shobogenzo Zuimonki. Simon and Schuster.

Gould, C. (2009) DŌGEN AND PLATO ON LITERATURE AND ENLIGHTENMENT 1, Florida International University, Asian Studies, Japan Studies Review, Volume XIII, pp. 169–185. Available at: https://asian.fiu.edu/jsr/gould-dogen-and-plato-p169.pdf (Accessed: 5 January 2025).

Loori, John Daido (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Plato and Jowett, B. (1994) The Republic, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/150/150.txt. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/150/pg150-images.html (Accessed: 5 January 2025).

Rudd, A. (2022) Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter, Oxford University Press eBooks. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192856289.001.0001.

A Long Land and Sea Story Painting

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Sunday, 18 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

December 31, 2024

I finished the larger “A Long Land and Sea Story” 40 x 30 inch acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood painting two days ago. I have left it resting to ensure I am finished with it for now. I believe it is complete but as always reserve the right to go back to it at a later date. 

The title of this artwork changed along with the impact of its final rendering when the above ground became more figurative in approach while the below ground remained more abstract and flat. The more I worked on the painting, the more powerful the land and sea history became. My original working title “Bennett Bay Middens” somehow became meaningless in relation to the longer story being told. The change from the proposed abstract and figurative elements was more evolving and embedded in my making process. It is an untended surprise from engaging with materials, memory and imagination that feels and seems just right to convey a slice through time.

“A Long Land and Sea Story” by Terrill Welch, 40 x 30 inch acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood.
Completed December 29, 2024


Artist notes: Revealed is a vertical slice of earth exposed through erosion in such a way that the most of the surface of the painting has a narrow depth of field, holding space and time in the shapes of the shells and then releasing the viewer into an empty sky. For this work, flat colour is used for the aspects below ground combined that is broken by the symbolic red line and broken china with a more representational illusion of a three dimensional view above ground. The painting contains the notion of a slice of earth exposing the passage of time. I am using the red line to represent climate impacts. Broken china is used to symbolize colonialism. The final colour of sky to represent space and mood. I am asking myself – what does it mean for a white woman of European settler culture in 2024 to paint the eroding Indigenous middens from 4,000 or more years ago on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People in Canada?


It seems fitting that this is the final painting I complete in 2024 and it will also be the first painting released in 2025. I need a long story such as this right now, one that can take me past the present short days of grey skies and cold damp west coast winter drizzle.


It is easier to comprehend the size of this work if I share it in a digital room view.


I feel the weight of these coming January and early February days. I shall walk the shore of Reef Bay, paint in the studio and read about material methods, research and thinking about things in the book by Sophie Woodward. It is just six short weeks until the days are much longer and the island’s early spring begins to creep to the surface. I have a lot I want and need to do during this time. The annual deep quiet of our island during these weeks and the isolation will assist me with these tasks.  


Research into Middens and Materials For Paintings

December 6, 2024

Painting from photo references and imagination with tiles screws and broken bone china at the top attached with Golden Soft Acrylic Gel Medium (archival and stays flexible) and walnut oil paint over primed cradled wood surface.

Research about another artist who broke bone china – Dana Claxton 1997 Buffalo Bone China https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china

The middens remind us that the forest can be enhanced where people live or rather lived.

‘Intertidal Resource Use Over Millennia Enhances Forest Productivity’ excerpt: Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia’s coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is particularly the case over the last 6,000 years when intensified intertidal shellfish usage resulted in the accumulation of substantial shell middens. We show that soils at habitation sites are higher in calcium and phosphorous. Both of these are limiting factors in coastal temperate rainforests. Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) trees growing on the middens were found to be taller, have higher wood calcium, greater radial growth and exhibit less top die-back. Coastal British Columbia is the first known example of long-term intertidal resource use enhancing forest productivity and we expect this pattern to occur at archaeological sites along coastlines globally. 

Reference: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307529251_Intertidal_resource_use_over_millennia_enhances_forest_productivity

Soft Acrylic Gel Medium 

Soft Gel Gloss can be used as a glue substitute for collage effects.

Use instructions: The acrylic medium that can also be used to great effect for collage techniques is “Golden – Soft Gel Gloss”. Instead of diluting it with water you use it neat, straight from the tub. This will be perfect to seal the pictures as well, it really is a magic medium! Either paint both sides of the image you want to collage with the medium and attach to the surface you’re working on or cover the surface with a coat of medium, stick your image on, wait for it to dry and then cover with another layer of medium to seal it.

I gathered this research about middens and materials when I did the small study in March 2024. This exploration of the Middens seems important to my sea floor series even if a I consider it slightly on the periphery of the tentative main body work. There is an aspect of a historic more mutually beneficial relationship of humans with the land that I sense can provide guidance to my work and current and future viewers who engage with this work. I think of it as a reflection point or something to consider in our acts of daily doing and being.

Reference list:

Claxton, D. (1997 [-2018]) Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton. Available at: https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 6 December 2024).

Trant, A.J. et al. (2016) ‘Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity’, Nature Communications, 7(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12491.

Seafloor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Saturday, 17 October 2026

Much of this early research was set aside but some strands were pulled through to the end so I want to keep it here for future reference.

Monday, 30 December 2024

Full text and reference list for: Seafloor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch

Welcome! I am Terrill Welch. 

In my Sea Floor painting series, I will practice the Zen theory of seeing with the whole body and mind and moving through this awareness to be able to function in the ordinariness of our lives as discussed by John Daido Loori in 2004.

I also consider that art theory, as described by Cynthia Freeland, “involves the effort to organize a dizzying variety of phenomena so as to try to say what they have in common that makes them special.”  (Freeland, 2003)

In addition, in the words of bell hooks “… I find writing – theoretical talk – to be most meaningful that which invites readers to engage in critical reflection and to engage in the practice…” in her case “of feminism.” (hooks, 1991, p. 8) 

Though hooks is talking about writing and readers, I suggest that the same principle can apply to art theory being most meaningful when viewers are invited to engage in critical reflection and to engage in/with the practice of making art. 

I propose that art theory is embedded in our making practice and lived experiences where one continuously revises and informs the other. 

The purpose of my Seafloor series is to engage in an intimate conversation between land and sea and the art of painting with the intent that development and completion of a work will instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience. However, this is not an isolated new beginning.

As a white, rural, post secondary educated mid sixties woman of settler ancestry living on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People along the southwest coast of Canada, I was born after the 1940’s and 50’s American Abstract Expressionism movement which included the likes of Mark Rothko and before the gestural figurative and gauging work of Canadian painter Patterson Ewen in the 60’s and 80’s, which has then led me to the thrill of performance art such as the significant contemporary work of Joan Jonas and Dana Claxton and their powerful installation art. Through all of this, I have remained a practicing painter for the past 50 years with primarily figurative, semi-figurative, semi-abstract and impressionist leanings.

I can and do experiment with painting fully abstractly. However, the process and the results seem incomplete to me for the conversations I wish to have with my subjects in paint. Both figurative and abstract elements in my paintings are imperative to the depth, movement and full expression I want to create in my work. 

With this context in mind, I propose that positioning figurative versus abstract in contemporary art is possibly a false dichotomy. I suggest that in my painting practice for this series, figurative and abstract painting are on the same continuum and have an elastic tension between whole body and mind awareness and the functionality required within our ordinary lives. 

This both/and approach to figurative/abstract painting has strong historical beginnings with French painter Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) through to American painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993) and Canadian painter Patterson Ewen (1925 – 2002) to those referenced in 2021 by Julian Delarange in contemporary art such as David Hockney (1937 -) , Gerhard Richter (1932 – ), Alex Katz (1927 – ) and the youngest at 65 years old, Peter Doig (1959 -).

In 2023, Camille Cohen continues to explore why figurative art has maintained its relevance through time citing the iconic work of Frida Kalho (1907 – 1954) and the figurative abstractions of Cecily Brown (1969 – ). (Cohen, 2023)

However, there are risks within this making approach. As Loori cautions, once we name something, by giving it figurative meaning, we risk no longer noticing how what we have named is perpetually changing. (p. 73 Loori, 2004) We risk missing what else our subject is and what it might yet become. 

I address this risk by beginning again and again, breath by breath, brushstroke by brushstroke through to the quivering notion of naming before it is named – leaving room in each painting for future possibilities and discoveries. 

Video publicly available to view on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LOOo6ipMBcg?si=koFBO4x6UMfu9MfH


Reference list

Claxton, D. (1997) Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton. Available at: https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 6 December 2024).

Cohen, C. (2023) What is Figurative Art ? A comprehensive guide, COHLE GALLERY. Available at: https://www.cohlegallery.com/blogs/stories/what-is-figurative-art (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Delagrange, J. (2021) Contemporary Figurative Painting: A Complete Overview – CAI, Contemporary Art Issue. Available at: https://www.contemporaryartissue.com/contemporary-figurative-painting-a-complete-overview-and-list/ (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Diebenkorn, R. (1957) Sea Wall [Oil on Canvas]. Available at: https://diebenkorn.org/objects/220/?group=52ae518792775b11d5b4a4cddb7f6f80 (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Drouin-Brisebois, J. and Diviney, D. (2024) JOAN JONAS: WE COME FROM THE SEA, Gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Available at: https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/your-collection/joan-jonas-we-come-from-the-sea (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Ewen, P. (1983) Ice Floes at Resolute Bay [acrylic on gouged plywood].

Freeland, C. (2003) Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192804631.001.0001.

Griffin, K. (2018) ART SEEN: Only British bone china allowed for Buffalo Bone China, vancouversun. Vancouver Sun. Available at: https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/art-seen-only-british-bone-china-allowed-for-buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 21 December 2024).

Hatch, J.G. (2018) Paterson Ewen: Life & Work, Art Canada Institute – Institut de l’art canadien. Available at: https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/paterson-ewen/biography/ (Accessed: 13 November 2024).

hooks, bell (1991) Theory as Liberatory Practice bell hooks. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 2., pp. 1–12. Available at: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Crisis-and-Critique-2018-19/hooks_theory.pdf.

Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5367 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Jonas, J. (2023) Joan Jonas in ‘Fiction’ – Season 7 – ‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ | Art21, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/x2WkckhWRxw?si=NhphxzLbyAm498tq (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Loori, John Daido (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Lynk, M. (2024) ‘We come from the sea’: American artist Joan Jonas on the pull of oceans and Cape Breton, CBC. Ideas in the Afternoon, Radio One. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artist-joan-jonas-cape-breton-and-oceans-1.7358491 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Meiers, A. (2020) How the Rothko Chapel Creates Spiritual Space, JSTOR Daily. Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-rothko-chapel-creates-spiritual-space/ (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

Trant, A.J. et al. (2016) ‘Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity’, Nature Communications, 7(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12491.

Welch, T. (2022a) Future Fragments Study [acrylic and oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/future-fragments-study (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2022b) Sandstone Serpents at the Entrance of Active Pass [acrylic and pencil crayon on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sandstone-serpents-at-the-entrance-of-active-pass (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024a) A Long Land and Sea Story [acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood].

Welch, T. (2024b) Drifting with Seashells in a Receding Tide [digital sketch using Art Set App].

Welch, T. (2024c) Late August Morning [oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/late-august-morning (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024d) Rhythms on the Sea Floor with Crab [acrylic on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/rhythms-on-the-sea-floor-with-crab (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024e) Sea and Seals [oil, ceramic tiles, screws and wire on wood]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sea-and-seals (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024f) Sea Floor at Reef Bay [walnut oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sea-floor-at-reef-bay (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024g) Sea Floor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/LOOo6ipMBcg?si=6a_eNxmBZWSAjdKi (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024h) Shells Gathering Study [walnut oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/shells-gathering-study (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024i) Strait of Georgia Blues [walnut oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/strait-of-georgia-blues (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024j) Varnish Clamshell in the Flow [walnut oil on linen]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/varnish-clamshell-in-the-flow (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Rough capture of research considerations

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

I am beginning to muse about research considerations.

Do I restrict geographic site or sites for my field work?

Are there other materials and ways of engagement other than paint and a surface that are compelling to me when having a conversation with nature?

How does being with nature, specifically the sea instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience.

What marks or rhythms of marks and shapes on a painting surface convey inner peace, wellbeing and resilience?

Action: Must investigate theories and research – My biases are that these aspects of self engagement, realizations or vibration achieved by both the maker of the work and the viewer of the same work allows for the best opportunity for living a full, rich life with compassion, accountability,  and endurance. I question whether this is true or simply long held assumptions.

Now to get on with some painting in the studio. It is only 9:30 and I should be able to get a couple of hours in at least. Then we have the “Making Day” tomorrow for school. This should make for a nice warm up for then.

Latest small work of a varnish clamshell in a seasonal stream at the tide line

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

The making process begins with a few paint marks in walnut oils on an 8 x 10 inch linen on board surface with a solid oil red ground. I wanted the solid foundation this deep red will offer to the much lighter overpainting.

I have a short video from my field work and reference gathering that I play several times as I work. It is the shapes and movement balanced by the flashes of light sparkling in the water that most interesting me. I reach down into the soft ripples of water caressing the clamshell and set down the broadest of brush marks onto the surface.

My intention for this work is to instil a sense of inner peace, resilience and wellbeing. The work is a reminder of who I am after a stressful and tumultuous couple of weeks. I need this making process almost as much as I need to breathe. I can feel myself centre and my shoulders relax as I work.

I now sit writing these notes as the December afternoon low sun streams into the studio and across the kitchen beside where I am sitting. The house is quiet. A soft breeze moves the branches gently on the large for trees outside the window. I am grateful for this rural bounty. I am grateful for life. I am grateful for the technology that allows me to capture bits of my world and the tools to create passages of conversation with our surrounding environment, particularly the sea, the Salish Sea if I want to be more specific. Even when I cannot physically get there, the sea remains close to me as the tides move back and forth against the edges of my memory. The small work now rests in front of the larger painting I will continue working on before daylight tomorrow.


“Varnish Clamshell in the Flow” by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch walnut oil on linen board. Completed December 10, 2024


Artist notes: I had gone to Bennett Bay and along the beach to where a season creek was flowing into the sea and washing over seashells along the way. They varnish clamshells created a light musical sound as the water passed over them. The beauty of the shapes and sounds created a textured resonance in my being. For those moments inner peace is held, in those shapes, in those colours and sounds. I find inner peace in the abstracted loosen of the brushstrokes, gifted to the linen surface without misgivings or hesitation. This is the full body experience I aim to capture in this small painting completed in oil, wet-in-wet, in the studio a month later. 

It feels good to be back working in my physical studio again!

Working in the Unknown at the Edge of Knowing

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

This post combines three separate original entries into this one post. I rarely use digital painting tools but they came in handy when I had to be away from my art studio for an unknown amount of time.

Exploring the Work of Artist Joan Jonas: ‘We come from the sea’ 

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Yesterday, I was going on my daily 4 km circuit walk around our neighbourhood crescent that we have imagined for ourselves as a practical, low maintenance and enjoyable treadmill. Sometimes, I just walk up the hill on Bowsprite Crescent, along Wood Dale Drive down the other side of Bowsprite Crescent and back to where I started and then around again, six times. Other times while I walk, I listen to music or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national public radio. 

On Monday, 18 November 2024, I decided to listen to CBC Radio One live with Nahlah Ayed and ‘Ideas in the Afternoon’. Ayed was presenting an interview by Mary Lynk with American artist Joan Jonas that was first published on CBC 22 October 2024. The interview had been done in July of this year and Joan Jonas is vibrant, engaging and 88 years old. I was still listening when I had finished my walk. When I came back into the house, I quickly wrote down the information to be able to find the podcast later.  

Today, I listened to the interview again. What has deeply intrigued me is Jonas’ remarks about the our human relationship to the sea:

‘We come from the sea. We don’t think about it very often, but our semicircular canals are similar to those of the fish. Our eyes are similar. We have backbones and the fish grew little legs and came out of the sea and then developed into what we are today,’ she explained (Lynk, 2024).

‘There are different theories about how that happened. My idea is that we have a memory of that somewhere in our unconscious. We remember that we come from the sea. It’s not a memory. It’s a feeling. It’s in our DNA. I think that’s where all these stories come from and our desire to go back to the sea, our desire to swim underwater’(Lynk, 2024).

However, it is most powerful to hear Jonas read her words at 6:30 on the 53:59 podcast. There is power and conviction in her voice as if she is lifting her words up over the sounds of waves. 

I find myself searching further into Jonas’ work in video and performance art. Her works are like having a conversation in the language of my inner most private self. Jonas uses memory, imagining, dream, her voice, her body and video together and exquisitely mapped out in layers within physical space using mirrors, installations, collaborations with musicians, performers, herself and the act of drawing or painting. These aspects are all present at once in a fractured whole of space and time which includes a viewer, possibly any viewer or at least no perfectly contextualised viewer. 

There is something important for me here. I have yet to grasp what exactly. I know it might have to do with my observation and reference gathering practice. I am fascinated by how Jonas makes her process visible and part of what she presents in conversation with herself and others. There are fragments of continuation in her multimedia pieces that paint alone on a surface has difficulty communicating by itself. Has Jonas offered a way to see the length of my art practice as my art rather than just what is left behind with my body and mind on a painted surface? I am not sure but I want to ponder the possibility. 

I place this note here in my journal so it can be mused upon during the weeks, months and years ahead.

References:

Lynk, M. (2024) ‘We come from the sea’: American artist Joan Jonas on the pull of oceans and Cape Breton, CBC. Ideas in the Afternoon, Radio One. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artist-joan-jonas-cape-breton-and-oceans-1.7358491 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5367 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Jonas, J. (2023) Joan Jonas in ‘Fiction’ – Season 7 – ‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ | Art21, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/x2WkckhWRxw?si=NhphxzLbyAm498tq (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Working in the Unknown at the Edge of Knowing

Tuesday, 26 November 2024

In again watching Dr. Michele Whiting’s video lecture “Meaning Making/Making Meaning”, I am reminded of the power of full body memory. I am reminded about how much information is gathered that is not necessarily at first accessible through immediate recall of images or words but rather through sensations that were so very necessary before we developed a human capacity for language and naming – possibly the world of an infant or early humans. I sense that we do not lose these capacities but rather that they are often embedded beneath our quick short-hand ability to classify and organize information into meaning through naming and language of what we see and experience. 

This brings me to the question of representation in art making, as distinct from visual imitation in art making. This has been a vexing problem for me and it is one I come back to again and again in my practice. Painting an ocean in my practice has less to do with the visual curve of a wave and much more to do with smell of the sea and the feel and temperature of the air and the impermanence of natural light and the specific sounds of water and shore birds – yet, in the end, there is often a wave and a horizon line that orients the viewer inside of the seascape to feel as much as observe this full body and sensory moment. I will not fully unpack this tension right at the moment but rather put the problem here as a placeholder to come back to again later. 

Next, let’s have a look at the progress I made last week on the 40 x 30 inch acrylic, oil and broken china on wood with the working title “Middens in Bennett Bay.” 

I worked upside down to layout and attach the broken china.


Before doing this, I had developed the composition first with a few lines in pencil and then blocked in the underpainting with acrylic.


As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have chosen a composition that is a vertical slice of earth revealed through erosion in such a way that the most of the surface has a narrow depth of field, holding space and time in the shapes of the shells and then releasing the viewer into an empty sky. For this work, flat colour is being considered for the aspects above ground combined with a more representational illusion of a three dimensional view below ground that is broken by the symbolic red line and broken china. This is then contained within the notion of a slice of earth exposing the passage of time. I am using the red line to represent climate impacts. Broken china is used to symbolize colonialism. The final colour of sky to represent space and mood. I am asking myself – what does it mean as a white woman of European settler culture in 2024 painting the eroding Indigenous middens from 4,000 or more years ago on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People? Who is my intended audience?



Here is a close up of the bits of broken china before I attached it with heavy body acrylic medium to the red acrylic painted wood surface.


Next is to continue the over painting with oil paints.The overpainting, except for the red line, will not be so bright but I am not sure what shades of grey, green and muted purples it will be yet. We shall see once I start working.

I also want to record that my physical situation has taken an unexpected turn following what should have been a short break on Saturday to attend my son’s wedding in Vancouver. Upon my return Sunday evening, as I pulled into the driveway, my husband fell getting up out of his chair when he stood to greet me and broke his hip. After an ambulance arrived and paramedics assessed the situation, a water taxi ambulance was ordered to get him and me off the island to the Victoria General hospital. Following a night in an overcrowded emergency ward, he has now had x-rays and CT scan and was moved to a hospital room in a unit while he waits for possible surgery. 

After a full night’s sleep, I now think I have a plan to be able to continue my schooling, possibly by using a digital drawing and painting app called “Art Set” part of the time that will allow me to work from a raw start digitally as if I were using physical tools but in a digital format. Here is an example of such work from about a year ago.



I have little experience with this app which in a way might be useful, if one wants to work in the unknown at the edge of knowing as discussed in Dr. Michele Whiting’s video lecture. 

I may possibly miss this week’s class on Thursday, November 28th, however, I am confident that after that I will have it sorted, though it is likely to be a challenging six months ahead until my husband heals and becomes more independent again.

DRIFTING WITH AN EBBING TIDE

Tuesday, 3 December 2024

I am still in flux drifting from place to place since Saturday, November 23, 2024 when I went to my son’s wedding gathering in Vancouver, British Columbia. Upon my return Sunday evening I came through the door to my husband laying on the floor with a broken hip that required an ambulance, a water taxi ambulance to get to the larger Vancouver Island in the dark, rain and rough water where we transferred to another ambulance and eventually made it to the emergency room forty minutes later. By this time it’s after 11:00 pm. Around 2:00 am X-rays confirmed the break and I  reached a hotel room, showered and went to bed at 3:00 am. I stayed there for a second night and then moved to stay with family for a few days before moving to stay with other family members for the duration of David’s hospital stay in Victoria, British Columbia. Surgery has been successful, rehabilitation is underway and his release and home are a matter of days away rather than weeks. 

In all of this, I did miss one live online class. However, my focus has remained strong and connected to my art practice and studies. I am more emotionally exhausted than physically tired. Plans are in place to be back on Mayne Island for my call early on Thursday morning. From there, everything should become more steady. 

In the meantime, in addition to my regular daily walks in nature over the past week, I did a digital sketch today just to remind me of the sea and shore. 

“Drifting with Seashells in a Receding Tide” by Terrill Welch, digital sketch using Art Set App. December 3, 2024.


Artist notes: Seashells crouch in a soup of life with a receding tide. I breathe in and let out a ragged exhale. I am remembering this moment for comfort and strength. I am remembering to gain inner peace and access reserve strength. I can do this, I tell myself. I can do this.

There is no separating life from my art practice. One aspect has always influenced and impacted the other in unexpected ways. Together they provide me with a sense of wholeness. I do not know yet how these latest events will change both my life and art. I just know that they will.

New Small Painting Study of Mussels and Waves

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Monday, 12 October 2026

It is Canadian Thanksgiving today and I have begun a new painting about something that I do not already know how to do. It is an experiment, not unlike this early painting in my nature-centric, reparative Seafloor series.

Excerpt from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

Saturday, January 25, 2025

This week on Tuesday, January 21, 2025, I followed through in my commitment to go closer in my sea floor landscape series. I had several reference options and decided on mussels as my subject. I gathered together a few images from my observations, some from as recent as this week. There are hours and hours of pleasurable meanderings and sitting and observing behind this selection that spans a period over the last ten months.

In the end, I decided to pull from this image from the beginning of June as a primary source of inspiration. It is the outside reef along the Strait of Georgia in the Salish Sea at Reef Bay.

I can still feel the sun on my back and the sound of the rhythmic wash of the sea over the mussels that brushes the salty air towards me as I crouch low to the barnacle-covered sandstone.

I decide on a close intimate view and begin to shape it onto a 12 x 10 inch acrylic red ground. 

The darks must go in first on this one. Even then, it will be a challenge to hold them to the end and round the forms while still keeping the life of the work.

The painting is blocked in swiftly on the small canvas.

I settle in painting while moving the easel around the studio, up onto the kitchen area and then around that room several times to stay out of the direct bright low midday winter sunlight. It didn’t seem to matter much. I used the adjustments as visual breaks and kept painting. The whole process from beginning to end took only a couple of hours.

I separate out and frame just the still shiny and wet painting to share to my social media followers along with my artist notes, as is my usual practice.

“Mussels and Waves” by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.

Artist notes: Soft waves wash over the mussels and recede and then wash forward again to the tune of the Salish Sea. Sun sparkles like tiny bells of joy off the wet mussels. I am building inner peace, wellbeing and above all resilience. This unassuming painting is my protest against our collective darkness.

A significant U.S. art collector of my small paintings inquires and then purchases the painting the next morning. This is her comment that I share with her permission:

I really fell in love with this one.  Even without reading your description, I understood the painting immediately.  Somehow I connect into your spirit so easily and I am thankful for such a gift.

There is no greater honour than having the stewardship of one of my paintings be taken up by an art collector. However, the best and most significant piece of this feedback is knowing that my intention for the work reached through to the viewer.  

I now have the edges painted (and those of five other recent works) while I hustling to get this one ready to ship before February 1st and the risk of a 25% tariff being proposed by the new U.S. administration. 

If this happens, it may possibly be the last painting of mine that is imported for a while. We shall see. Yes, sales are not everything as an artist. That said, I am a full-time independent artist with an art business that brings in revenue for living expenses and my continued education. This does not drive or even particularly influence my creative output… but it does fund it. Thankfully, the last few years have been reasonably good. There are no immediate concerns for now. 

Let’s take one last look at this small study in a digital room view provided by Canvy before it is sent off on an adventure of its own!

Now, I am off to work on my contextual study for the week while painted edges dry.

Yes, this is still one of my least favourite painting task but it does get easier as the years go by.

Reference Gathering and Reflection

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

Sunday, 11 October 2026 

Excerpt from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

Friday, November 15 to Saturday, November 16, 2024

Following yesterday’s weekly four o’clock in the morning Pacific Standard Time class, I went to see what messages our latest two days of high winds and rain storms had left along the shore at Saint John Point Park. It is a slow fifteen minute drive from my home. The Mayne Island speed limit is 50 km per hour maximum. In fact, we can get most places in fifteen minutes or less on our 21 square km island at this speed. Situated halfway between the two large metropolitan areas of Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria, our Mayne Island rural life is enjoyed by around 1,200 permanent full-time residents. The need for ferry travel on and off the island and only having one resort and motel creates an infrastructure barrier against overcrowding and caps our tourist capacity to about 3,000 – 4,000 during the spring, summer and fall. Therefore, on what we call cozy season, instead of more accurately described rainy season or storm season, I was not surprised to see the park parking lot empty when I arrive. The rugged and tree-lined trail I take is about 4 km long and winds across the point to a beach and then along the seaside of Navy Channel with low cliffs back to the parking lot.

The clouds were just beginning to break apart and let in a little light as I reached the beach.


Bits of shell and small peddles were beautifully placed by the waves on the driftwood.


Sometimes these storm wave conversations are full and richly shared.


Other times, the vocabulary is brief and firm.


Then there are the perfectly formed found compositions just waiting for me to notice.


I marvel at the intricate random placement of each discovery.


I think about how humans have walked these island shores for thousands of years and I wonder how many pairs of eyes have paused knelt to admire something similar. This brings me to this morning’s shared making time and working on the 40 x 30 inch “Bennett Bay Midden” painting in the dark with my one studio lamp.


I will have to settle in with it again and sort out a few things in the daylight but no permanent damage was done. After all, my references for these midden shells are likely about 4,000 years old. Surely, my time with them during less than ideal condition on the wood painting surface is made of equally tough substance. It is the continuation of time that interests me the most with the idea for this painting. In my brush marks, I want to hear the laughter, tears and worries of those that gathered to eat these clams and then toss the shells in a heap to be exposed again such a long time later. I want those brush marks to be like the waves that carry a connection between then and now and this next discovery I find as I study the shore.


Bull kelp is knotted as if having carefully tied up a package below the surface of the sea.

If only I could bring you the scent of cool, damp, salty waters that is laced with fresh broken fir branches that had been snapped off during the recent high winds.

I continue on along the trail to where ferns are hanging transparent and dripping after our heavy rains.

I walk onward through the arbutus tree grove and along the cliffs back towards the parking lot. This is where the tension tightens slightly between my subjects of the recent past and where I want to go with this new project. I have studied some of these arbutus trees for many years. They often feel like my closest friends.

This one is reaching the end of its life that has been shortened by several long summer droughts.


I have never painted it from this angle but my favourite is a larger work I did looking the other way.

“Arbutus on Saint John Point” by Terrill Welch, oil on canvas, 40 x 36 x 1.5 in (101.6 x 91.44 x 3.81 cm)

Artist notes: The portrait painting of this Arbutus tree seems to be saying “See, here we are. Just follow the trail and enjoy.” And I shall after a long pause visiting with this favourite elderly Arbutus tree because it won’t be with us for many more years. Painting these special trees is partly reverence and partly record keeping.

Farther along the trail, there is a magnificently curved arbutus tree that I I have become deeply attached to over the years.


I am not sure how many times I have painted its portrait from different angles in various weather. Here is one example.

“Arbutus Entertaining A Grey Day” by Terrill Welch, walnut oil on canvas, 30 x 24 x 1.5 in (76.2 x 60.96 x 3.81 cm)

Artist notes: As the elegant Arbutus tree curved around, framing Navy Channel, I thought it wanted to show me something. And I suppose it did. Who wouldn’t want to be admired with a trunk like this!

I won’t share anymore in detail but instead I will leave myself the link to the whole of my arbutus tree collection for easy reference later on as needed.

https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/collection/arbutus-tree-paintings-only

I know I will find it hard over the next couple of years to walk past these arbutus tree beauties and not set them to paint and canvas. However, my compromise is to simply take references as desired and file them away for later. This shift in focus does not need to be forever, just for now. It feels like keeping my footing solid as I venture forward into the unknown of this programme that I suspect will take me in directions I have yet to discover. I want to be flexible and ready to overturn limiting believes and discover blind spots in my critical thinking and art practice while at the same time carrying the best from the past with me, even if I throw various aspect aside as I go.

I keep walking. There are still no other vehicles in the park parking when I return. It seems as if no one else has arrived since I left a few hours ago. I really don’t mind. I was more than ready to receive this intimacy that nature had to offer. I read every possible note and passage for all of us.

Exploring Art Theories

Sunday November 17, 2024

Following a reviewed my journal and notes, I see a gap worth exploring. That gap has to do with developing an understanding of current art theories. My habitual reference gathering and studio practice is solidly established. This means I can put my learning efforts for a few weeks into researching and reading about art theories without anything going off the rails.

My background is in theories of Sociology, Feminist theories and Gender theories with my last attentive and focused learning ending in 1998. With this in mind, I thought I would begin with Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Cynthia Freeland (Oxford 2003) 

I read the conclusion first starting (p. 138, Freeland, 2003)

Abstract

“Art theory is not like scientific theories, such as Einstein’s special theory of relativity or Darwin’s theory of evolution: there do not seem to be any ‘laws’ of art that will predict artists’ behaviours, or that explain the ‘evolution’ of art history by detailing what ‘succeeds’ in making a work beautiful or significant. Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction concludes that despite these differences from science, art theory is still an explanatory enterprise: it involves the effort to organize a dizzying variety of phenomena so as to try to say what they have in common that makes them special.”

Then the Introduction (p. xvii – xix Freeland, 2003)

“A theory is more than a definition; it is a framework that supplies an orderly explanation of observed phenomena. A theory should help things make sense rather than create obscurity through jargon and weighty words.”

“It should systematically unify and organize a set of observations, building from basic principles. But the ‘data’ of art are so varied that it seems daunting to try to unify and explain them. Many modern artworks challenge us to figure out why, on any theory, they would count as art.”

“A big problem about laying out the data for this book is that our term ‘art’ might not even apply in many cultures or eras. The practices and roles of artists are amazingly multiple and elusive. Ancient and modern tribal peoples would not distinguish art from artefact or ritual. Medieval European Christians did not make ‘art’ as such, but tried to emulate and celebrate God’s beauty. In classical Japanese aesthetics, art might include things unexpected by modern Westerners, like a garden, sword, calligraphy scroll, or tea ceremony.”

“Many philosophers from Plato onward have proposed theories of art and aesthetics. We shall scrutinize some of them here, including the medieval colossus Thomas Aquinas, the Enlightenment’s key figures David Hume and Immanuel Kant, the notorious iconoclast Friedrich Nietzsche, and such diverse twentieth-century figures as John Dewey, Arthur Danto, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. Of course, there are also theorists in other fields who study art: from sociology, art history and criticism, anthropology, psychology, education, and more; I will refer to some of these experts as well.”

“Art theorists also ponder questions about artists: who are they, and what makes them special? Why do they do the sometimes odd things they do? Recently this has led to intense debate about whether intimate facts concerning artists’ lives, such as their gender and sexual orientation, are relevant to their art.” (p. xix Freeland, 2003) 

In reviewing these brief texts, I can see I have work to do. However, I shall start by reading this book and see where it takes me.

Reverence: 

Freeland, Cynthia, Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Oxford, 2003; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Sept. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192804631.003.0008, accessed 17 Nov. 2024.

Working Summary of Ideas, Plans and Practice

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Monday, 5 October 2026

Excerpt from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

Tuesday, 29 October – Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Working Summary of Ideas, Plans and Practice

Ideas: 

I am currently exploring the possibility of increasing peace through a sustained engagement with the land at the edge of the sea where the land is revealed and covered by the changing tides in what I am tentatively calling a macro landscape sea floor series of paintings. This series will aim to connect us with nature’s quiet yet profound rhythms, offering a visual meditation on the resilience and grace found within the sea and along its shores.

The paintings in this series will reflect the intimate gaze of observing the sea floor while the tide is low. I am searching to see if this new series will deepen my understanding of how our observation and connection with nature can contribute to a broader understanding of how peace is derived. If I hold the objective of understanding peace in my thoughts and as a direct intent of my painting process will this desire and learning be discernible and available to viewers?

My working definition of peace is best summarised in a quote from Etty Hillesum. 

“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.” (Hillesum, 2002, p. 535)

Hillesum was born January 15, 1914 in Middelburg, Netherlands. She died in Auschwitz concentration camp on November 30, 1943 at the age of 29. 

For this series, I am working with a rough definition of nature which includes flora and fauna in its natural state and the activities of humans who live and work respectfully in harmony with their natural environment, specifically as observed on Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada where I live.

Plans: 

My best guess is that I will likely have at least twenty of these small painting sketches for my project over the next two years and I hope to have about twelve larger paintings tentatively in the size of 48 x 40 inches completed in oil on canvas. I have ordered some 12 x 10 inch canvas for the smaller painting sketches and studies and I will also likely complete some medium size paintings that are 24 x 20 inches. To answer some of my questions about impact of this work I will also want to create a viewer feedback opportunity. I am not sure how this will be designed yet or how formal or informal the process will be. 

A few of my draft questions in relation to this body of work include –

How will I know if my focused intention on peace during my painting process creates a change in the areas of peace within me and/or in the amount of peace that is reflected and received by the viewers of the artwork?

Is there any noticeable difference in the paintings in this series from my previous work?

Could this work be powerful enough to impact both myself as the creator of the paintings and the viewers of the paintings by enhancing our ongoing experience of peace over time?

This completed body of work can then be shown together in a suitable public gallery or venue space or in part in my own gallery. It will also be possible to place it in a virtual gallery for online viewing using something like Kunstmatrix art spaces :

https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en

Practice: 

Separation between my act of living and my art practice are fleeting and microscopic at best. Sitting and walking in nature is accomplished within a flow of activities such as getting groceries, picking up the mail, car picnics, daily walks and providing primary care for my husband, David, who had a severe stroke fifteen years ago. As his cognitive abilities become more compromised, he can no longer stay on his own overnight and is finding it difficult to travel away from the island. My art practice exists within this tension of daily living and responsibilities. My studio is within our living space and painting breaks are used for putting such things the laundry in the dryer and getting potatoes into the oven to bake. The business side of my art practice is its own creature with a gallery space at our front gate that is open daily for walk-in self-browsing supported by an online gallery, social media posts and a monthly newsletter to art collectors and serious fans. Then there are the galleries and venues that represent my work that require less time but not none.

Since 2020, I have less ability to spend whole days traversing the shores and seaside trails. I have extremely limited ability to explore shores and trails off of our island. It is simply a fact. The constraint has meant taking my practice deeper into this specific place. I call it “thriving in place” and I completed a year of artwork in 2022 – 2023 with this intention. In fact, these constraints are what led me to examining and considering the sea floor as a subject of study. 

Several times a week, I wander down to the sea shores around Mayne Island at various times of day to gather inspiration and photographic sketches for later reference in the studio. In my reference gathering of these photographic sketches, I often take a child’s view and get low to the earth’s surface. I have found this releases a kind of inner curiosity and strengthens my ability to observe without having to know what I am observing. It is a way of framing by shape and texture in those moments before my brain begins the naming of things. This allows me a more fuller multiple sensory experience and memory. 

Once back in the studio, I edit and keep these photographic sketches in an album of references for my sea floor series painting project. I then take the images that resonate the most and decide how I might use them individually or together in a composition. From there, I choose a surface and set my intension of rendering the essence of peace as I worked from memory, references and intuition. I tend to work my surfaces wet-into-wet in a wholistic way building up passages in overall layers while standing at the easel and moving repeatedly back and forward from the surface.

Context: 

What other painters and artists have approached this subject of peace through history and in contemporary art?

Historical – 

Monet’s Waterlilies panels at the Musée de l’Orangerie Paris, France that were a gift to France. These are of particular interest for their all over painting quality. 

Rothko’s Chapel in Houston, Texas, U.S.A 

Matisse’s Chapel in Vence, south of France

Richard Diebenkorn, U.S.A and his series of work that moved between abstract and figurative landscapes.

Contemporary – This I am still researching though the work of Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, and Peter Doig seems like a possible place to start. 

What artists and writers have a strong influence on my painting practice?

Since January 2010, when I made a commitment to develop a full-time painting practice, there have been many painters, poets and writers who have figuratively and sporadically sat with me as I worked. However, so far there are just two individuals and three books that have provided me enduring company during my journey. My frequent visits to these three books is evident in their tattered covers, pencil and pen marked pages and frequent bent over sticky notes. In no particular order, they are The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori (2007) and New Selected Poems, Volume One (1992) and Two (2006) by Mary Oliver. Both Loori’s book and Oliver’s two volumes of poems bring me back to how I want to approach nature and my art practice. There is an emphasis on observing, noticing while at times waiting for permission to access what the land and sea have to offer. There is an underpinning of honesty and respect that is devoid of naivety and false reverence.

Reference list

Hillesum, E. (2002) Etty the Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943. Edited by K.A.D. Smelik. Translated by A.J. Pomerans. Grand Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans.

Loori, J. (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Meiers, A. (2020) How the Rothko Chapel Creates Spiritual Space, JSTOR Daily. Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-rothko-chapel-creates-spiritual-space/ (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

Monet, C., Kendall, R. and Marzo, B. (2000) Monet by himself : paintings, drawings, pastels, letters. Boston ; London: Little, Brown.

Oliver, M. (1992) New and Selected Poems, Volume One. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.

Oliver, M. (2006) New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. Boston, Massachusetts : Beacon Press.

Rothko Chapel (no date) http://www.rothkochapel.org. Available at: https://www.rothkochapel.org/learn/about/ (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

The Silence of Mark Rothko: Documentary – YouTube (2016) Youtu.be. YouTube Movies & TV. Available at: https://youtu.be/VT8tvCCbmYI?si=uhhIeQ5jArycfV9o (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

Virtual galleries for art | present your art in 3D‎ | art.spaces | KUNSTMATRIX (no date) artspaces.kunstmatrix.com. Available at: https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

Additional notes from lecture:

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Has the group session broadened or challenged your thinking in relation to your field of practice? How and why?

There are several observations worth noting: 

I appreciated the reminder that we live in a globally influenced world where artists create discussion and discourse. 

I am intrigued by the work of Dorothy Hood and her “Homage to Gorky” 1969, oil on canvas, Overall: 70 1/8 × 60in. (178.1 × 152.4 cm) that is currently held in the Whitney Museum of American Art collection. I am assuming that she means Arshile Gorky whose work and life I have recently been studying. Out of curiosity, I will do some further research to see where their work intersects. 

New Materialism – read more about:

The Arts and New Materialism: A Call to Stewardship through Mercy, Grace, and Hope by Nicholas Leonard

Art and Design Education, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA

Humanities 2020, 9(3), 84; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030084

Submission received: 24 June 2020 / Revised: 7 August 2020 / Accepted: 13 August 2020 /Published: 17 August 2020

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/3/84

I am always fascinated with how artists use their bodies within their art, not just in the making of a art but how bodies can become part of the work such as that of Joseph Beuys in his 1974 “I like America and America Likes me” and also Florence Peake “The Keeners” performance, 2015. The idea of art being temporary in its physical form where only imperfect and partial residue is left behind in memory, photographs and video. Could this be true of all art, that in the process of creating, the work is already dissolving because the artist has changed, the viewer has changed and the art product has changed?

The Story About My Making Practice

Saturday, 2 November 2024

There are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. There are stories we tell others about ourselves. Then there are stories others tell about us. All these stories are predominantly fictional with a skeletal structure of facts. It is not that we intend these stories about ourselves to be fictional. Rather, in the process of flawed remembering and telling and retelling, they come to be this way. With this acknowledgment, I have done my best to concisely tell others about my making process.

In my art practice, I make a conscious effort to remove myself as the hero in the work and allow my subject to hold this central role in conversation with the viewer, with the first intimate viewer being me. 

This is the story I tell others about my making of a painting in 297 words:

When painting, I do most of my exploring before I start through incessant internal iterations developed from my reference gathering practice of photographic sketches and small plein air studies. Once an idea holds my sustained excitement, I begin. 

I squeeze oil pigments in my left-handed, muscle memory order onto palette paper. I quickly mix a few colours knowing that I will make refinements later, sometimes right on the painting. 

I begin with two brushes, one each for light and dark. The specific brushes are decided by the size and material quality of the surface and the marks I want to make.

I lightly hold an intention for the work and then start with minimal lines in paint or pencil to guide my process on the dry, often complementary coloured, ground or underpainting. 

Developing the whole surface in rhythmic motion, I stand to paint and settle deeply into the core of my body rather than painting from my wrist or arm. At regular intervals, I move back and forth about six feet from the easel. There is no music playing. I prefer to work in silence allowing my subject to take up most of my internal and external meditative attention.

Eventually, the surface is loosely covered in paint. At this point, my reference materials are of little value and I set them aside. I again breathe into my intention. With soft focused eyes, I continue somewhere between my full-sensory memory for the work and fragments of information from other experiences. My brush-to-canvas movements are equally spontaneous and considered. After a while, I step back and pause. My critical thinking fully engages. I review what is left behind on the surface. Does it work? Is it asking for anything more? Have I said all I can say for now? 

BRIEF THOUGHTS ON IDEAS, PLANS AND PRACTICE

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Sunday, 4 October 2026

Excerpt from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal,

Thursday, 24 October 2024

Personal context:

Several hours have passed since our MA in Fine Art early morning group introduction. I thought I would settle by now and that my bullet train thoughts would slow to a human saunter. Alas, this has not yet occurred. Instead, I have pulled reference books from shelves and stack them on the table in the great room for companionship and comfort.


These rather tattered and marked up books, along with a few newer friends, cannot stay here as this is shared space. But for now, it will be fine. I have the top of a sideboard in my loft office to bring them to for ongoing easy access. Now to briefly explore the questions of my ideas, plans and practice.

I have touched on these questions in my first post on October 10, 2024 before beginning. This morning’s introduction breaks open further possibilities around what to consider in my practice. What influences my practice? Has it changed over the years? If so, in what ways? How has and does this shape my ideas for what it is I want to explore now? How are my plans influenced and formed by my current practice? Let’s start here.

Integrating living within my art practice:

Separation between my act of living and my art practice are fleeting and microscopic at best. Sitting and walking in nature are accomplished within a flow of activities such as getting groceries, picking up the mail, car picnics, daily walks and providing primary care for my husband who had a severe stroke fifteen years ago. As his cognitive abilities become more compromised, he can no longer stay on his own overnight and is finding it difficult to travel away from the island. My art practice exists within this tension of daily living and responsibilities. My studio is within our living space and painting breaks are used for putting such things as the laundry in the dryer and getting potatoes into the oven to bake. The business side of my art practice is its own creature with a gallery space at our front gate that is open daily for walk-in self-browsing supported by an online gallery, social media posts and a monthly newsletter to art collectors and serious fans. Then there are the galleries and venues that represent my work that require less of my time but not none. Which reminds me the island fall studio tour is two weeks away! And I need to order my husband’s new prescription! Where was I? Yes, I integrate living within my well honed art practice.

I find moments to slip deeply into the place of waiting to be invited by nature to receive her gifts. I never seem to tire of this Mayne Island small bay.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 4:13 PM Reef Bay, Mayne Island, British Columbia.

Reef Bay is its colonial name given for the sandstone reefs angling out into the Salish Sea along the Strait of Georgia on our small island, accessed by ferry, private boat or float plane with a full-time population of about 1,200 people, located between the mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The view is to the southeast and, on a good day, Mount Baker in Washington State of the United States of America is visible. Standing here purposely breathing, I recognize and acknowledge that I am on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People. Stolen lands. An issue that I likely will need to uncomfortably endure for my lifetime.

My husband is comfortably waiting in the car. He will watch my progress along the shore with a patience I cannot match. I pause and scrunch down close to the water just looking and half listening to the seagulls and the soft rolling waves farther out towards the strait. I am not looking for anything in particular in the soup of life at the tide’s edge. I first grasp overall shapes and colours. Then shadows and forms begin to gain meaning as I recall and name my observations. Shells. Clamshells. Mussel shells. Snail shells. Broken shells. Bits of barnacles. And do you see the wee crab at the top middle?

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 4:14 pm Sea floor at Reef Bay, Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada.

I wander a bit further but on this day, not out of sight of the car where my husband is waiting. Yes, my art practice has changed in how I gather reference and sink into and meander through the landscape. Since 2020, I have less ability to spend whole days traversing the shores and seaside trails. I have extremely limited ability to explore shores and trails off of our island. It is simply a fact. The constraint has meant taking my practice deeper into this specific place. I call it thriving in place and I completed a year of artwork in 2022 – 2023 with this intention. In fact, these constraints are what led me to examining and considering the seafloor as a subject of study. My plans are influenced and formed by what is available to me. I choose to take the paths that are open to me without complaint or regret. I recognize this time as precious and accept it with sacred grace, a gift.

Now, I had better move those reference books up to the loft. But before I do, a few lines from ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver on page 110 of New and Selected Poems, Volume One to take with us into the day…

…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Monday, October 28, 2024

Before I begin a summary of notes for my latest painting sketch, let’s get these notes from my research on another artist’s specific body of work, Mark Rothko’s Chapel, that may be of interest in painting an intension to enhance our sense of inner peace.

Pockets of Silence and Mark Rothko Chapel 

“Many who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where they can root and grow.” 

“The struggle is beyond painting, not with painting.”

“There is more power in telling little than telling all. Silence is so accurate.” 

Marc Rothko, The Silence of Mark Rothko, YouTube Movies & TV, released 2016. Documentary narrated by his son.

Within silence is a contemplation propelling bold action.

How the Rothko Chapel Creates Spiritual Space by Allison Meier, March 2, 2020 JSTOR 

https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-rothko-chapel-creates-spiritual-space/

“In the stillness of the Rothko Chapel, all are invited to have peace or silence, with the paintings providing an enigmatic portal to contemplation.”

About the Rothko Chapel https://rothkochapel.org/learn/about/


Saturday morning, October 26, 2024 at 9:40 am, finds me again on the beach at Reef Bay. The storm from the night before mostly missed us but not the Salish Sea which has tossed up large bull kelp seaweed along the shore.

Saturday, October 26, 2024 9:40 am. Reef Bay, Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada. Looking East.

In my reference gathering of photographic sketches, I often take a child’s view and get low to the earth’s surface. I have found this releases a kind of inner curiosity and strengthens my ability to observe without having to know what I am observing. It is a way of framing by shape and texture in those moments before my brain begins the naming of things. This allows me a more fuller multiple sensory experience and memory.


The day has intermittent sun through hazy mist and the overall light feels a little flat. Knowing that what I seek will still be intriguing, I slowly walk along the bottom of the reef.

Saturday, October 26, 2024 10:05 am. Reef Bay, Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada. Looking East.

I wasn’t disappointed. In this tile of image are a few of my photographic reference sketches that have been added to my album of materials for later use in the studio.


Though I have a large DSL camera, I primarily collect my photographic sketches with my 11 plus pro iPhone. I find the immediacy of this tool most relevant for my needs.

On Sunday morning, I pull an 11 x14 inch gessobord with a yellow acrylic ground from the studio shelf and I set up my small easel. As my 66 year old hips demand, I lay the anti-fatigue mat down onto the hot water-heated floor that is warm under my bare feet.


I squeeze out the various M.Graham walnut oil based pigments in my tailor-made, left-handed, muscle memory order, onto disposable palette paper and then quickly mix a few starting colours while knowing that as I work, more and more of my paint will be mixed and adjusted right in the painting surface.


I have chosen two images to turn and collage together for this painting sketch and study. I use my Apple Pencil to guide my eye in the second image rather than physical or digitally merging the photographs into one composition. I trust my intuitive ability to later scale and adjust the composition as necessary onto the painting surface.


I save the two primary images so I can easily move between them on my iPad, similarly to how they are shown above.

I go to where my brushes rest next to south window overlooking the valley.


I pick out two angle quarter inch brushes and two small rounds. One each for painting light and dark. It is a small surface and I want the ability to add lines to my usual wet-into-wet painting process. I will save the large brushes for larger surfaces later on.

I have few consistent approaches to painting a painting. The grounds or underpaintings are often in complementary colours to the over paintings. The surfaces range from canvas, linen on wood, wood and gessobord. I sometimes start by roughing in with paint or, like in this painting, a few minimal pencil lines to guide my process.


I tend to work my surfaces in a wholistic way building up passages in overall layers. In this case I started from the outside-in with my darkest colours.


From there, I continued to develop the painting by working with my dark and light areas in rhythmic motion while reminding myself that my intention for this work is inner peace. Even on this small surface, I stand to paint and settle deeply into the core of my body rather than painting from my wrist or arm. I move back and forth about six feet from the surface at regular intervals. There is no music playing. I prefer to work in silence with only the natural sounds in the room surrounding me. In this case, the rain on our tin roof is most prominent. Light breaks and recedes behind the rolling clouds in my less-than-ideal south exposure studio. However, it is what I have and I make it work. Thankfully the southwest coast of Canada is part of a northern rainforest and we have many overcast days, particularly in the winter.


Eventually, the surface is covered and the painting is what I refer to as blocked in. At this point, my reference material is of little value and I set it aside. The painting must now stand on its own through to completion. I breathe into my memory. I am deeply embedded in the painting process somewhere between what I have witnessed and fragments of information from other experiences. I am drifting between the tides and flouncing over and between the stones and seaweed. My brush-to-canvas requires no thought as sensations and intuition guide my mark making. After a while, I step back and pause.


I am having trouble seeing where I need to go next or even if I need to go anywhere. I have been painting for a little over two hours. It is almost 1:00 pm. I take a break and we go out for a late lunch. I take photograph of the painting sketch before leaving so I can glance at it if I choose. I am not completely disengaged from my creative process and will come back to in my mind’s eye frequently and occasionally check my phone image to see what is currently on the painting surface. This process is familiar to David and he reads his book while we wait for our lunch to be served and is quietly indulgent.

When we return home, it is getting close to 4:00 pm. The light is heavy as more rain threatens. I go straight to the studio and begin painting again. Within an hour, the painting sketch is complete and resting. The light is now terrible for taking a photograph but I do it anyway.


This way, during the evening while we watch a show, I can look at it, if I wish – and I almost always wish, without physically getting up and going to the studio.

In the morning, I get up and study the painting sketch. I pull open the palette box just in case.


I can find no way in. There is no brush mark insisting to be made. The small study is complete. There is nothing more I can say for now. Though it is still too shiny and wet for a decent photograph, for better or worse, it is finished.

“Shells Gathering Study” by Terrill Welch 11 x 14 inch walnut oil on gessobord. Completed Sunday, October 27, 2024. Artist notes: After the storm, interesting broken and worn bits on the sea floor at Reef Bay were arranged by the Salish Sea. I accepted nature’s invitation to explore and discover their shapes and patterns in a delicate collage of reference materials that only become integrated under my brush.

I will not likely always journal my painting process in such detail unless there is something specific I have done differently that I want to remember. My guess is that I will likely have at least twenty of these small painting sketches for my project over the next two years and I hope to have about twelve larger paintings tentatively in the size of 48 x 40 inches completed in oil on canvas. But we shall see. For now, I have started.

The Risks of Surprising Myself and Other Plein Air Adventures

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

Tuesday, 29 September 2026

How does a seasoned painter surprise themselves and paint what they do not yet know? It was a good question and a practice that Tracey Emin embraced with rigor and is discussed in detail in My Heart Is This Tracey Emin On Painting by Martin Gayford (2026). So I thought, why not? Give it a go. What is the worst that could happen? A bad painting? Yes, the results were a bad painting.

I began plein air with a grand manicured view in a location I was not familiar with on southern Vancouver Island at Otter Point Place. Possibly the most awkward part was the landscaped view. I had no idea what I might do with it. I started to paint the mountains on the far side of the strait and the sea and sky. It fell apart. Then I decided to lean into the feeling of the place through abstract mark making. Well things went from bad to worse.


I stopped there because I had absolutely no idea how I could salvage it.

Unsigned and untitled exercise in painting something I didn’t know and surprising myself. Plein air 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen at Otter Point Place, BC. Saturday, 26 September 2026.

I will paint over it at some point but first, I spent some time with it to see if there was anything at all I wanted to bring forward into the next work. Nothing came to mind… except maybe stop trying to surprise myself. 

The next day late in the morning we went to the Jordan River beach area. My dignity was still smarting from the disaster from the day before. But I shrugged it off and set up my easel on a flat area of sea washed rounded, flat stones.


I didn’t take many in-progress images besides this one.


And then forty-five minutes from start to finish, it is done.

“By The Sea at Jordon River” by Terrill Welch, acrylic on linen board. Plein air, Sunday, 27 September 2026.

Artist notes: With a warm sun and underlying cool breeze the temperature reached 19 degrees Celsius as I stood on the round flat rocks at the easel. In 45 minutes, I gathered the main sensations and shapes and chose to leave it rough and fully of sensory information. This is the last day of full sun for the week as cooler more unsettled weather moves it.

As usual, when something doesn’t work, it is important to remember that it is just paint on a surface. Life and limb haven’t been risked in the process of mark making. Let it go and move on. I am not sure I am interested in surprising myself any further but it was insightful to paint what I didn’t know before moving on to being with nature beside the sea. I will likely say more in the data collection post for this painting a little later on but this will do for now.