Harbouring Hope Painting Data Collection

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Painting Data Collection 

Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Title: Harbouring HopeDate Completed: Monday, 21 September 2026
Materials: oil on linenSize: 23.6 x 27.5 inches (60 x 70 cm)

Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 5-8

This painting still has strong impressionist leaning in the reflections but it also has an overall abstract sensibility to the shapes at the top of the painting. 

Reference Gathering: 

My reference gathering was thoughtful but cut short. I hadn’t planned on painting this scene. It was just an irresistible moment, like when a dog spots a squirrel. Their reaction is predictable and almost involuntary. My leash was that my husband David needing a bathroom and the ones in the park were closed. So we packed up and headed for the ferry with me turning back several times to look at the boats in the marina as we walked along the path back to the car. Their abstract shapes formed an enticing composition that wouldn’t let go of me.

Here is one of those reference images.

Marina at All Bay in Sidney, British Columbia mid September 2026. Photograph by Terrill Welch.

The next morning I pulled up the images and thought, if I just take this one small area here on the right, it will make a painting. That small suggestion from my mind to my heart was all it took. Now we have a painting! 

Making Process:

The making process was a process of simplifying to reach the core elements of my investigation and curiosity. 

Work-in-progress on “Harbouring Hope” by Terrill Welch, 23.6 x 27.5 inches (60 x 70 cm) oil on linen. Sunday, 20 September 2026.

I took a step back and then leaned into the spaces between the shapes and the light. This gave breadth as well as depth for emotion and energy in the work. The painting took shape over a period of six days beginning with oil sticks over a yellow acrylic ground on stretched linen.

Finished Painting:

“Harbouring Hope” by Terrill Welch, 23.6 x 27.5 inches (60 x 70 cm) oil on linen. Monday, 21 September 2026.

Making Notes:

I had just come from visiting a friend in the hospital and we stopped to have a picnic dinner in the park beside the marina at (what is now called) All Bay in Sidney, British Columbia. I took some reference images because the shapes and colours felt hopeful and there was a peaceful, reflective, deep calm about munching on sandwiches and looking out into the bay. I want to investigate the big gestures and emotions in this moment without getting caught in the weeds of visual or thought preciseness.

Reflective Analysis:

The painting of boats in a harbour is an old subject and likely has been happening as long as there have been boats. The question is, can I offer something more or unique in my approach? I reach into the big abstract-like shapes of the boats to carry the emotion of the work through their soft reflections. I pushed the horizon line high and let the sea in the bay hold the sky for me. I focus on the feeling of the moment rather than the details which allows the structure of the work to read true without getting caught up in the weeds of specifics and my own thinking. To pull this off, my brushstrokes must be filled with concentration, intuition and repeatable, confident, decision making. No second guessing. Make a mark and leave it. Make another mark and leave it. Paint something out, then paint it back in with the same confidence. It is not about getting it right but knowing what must be left behind, from the first mark to the last mark. The relationship of the marks within the composition outweighs architectural accuracy. The boats may feel like they are floating in the painting but no boat maker would build them this way. The most important aspect is that the work, in my first viewer’s eyes, reads as emotionally and physically whole. 

Reflexive Analysis: 

I have been musing about how there are no shortcuts in painting as there is in life. I must bring my whole vulnerable self to the easel, every time. I must be willing to investigate and admit, at least to myself, why I paint what I paint. In this case, it is part of processing the illness and healing of a dear friend who is in the hospital. We have been friends for over thirty years and I feel we are somehow both too young to be faced with her circumstances. But in truth, age has nothing to do with it. Illness has no fixed criteria. The details are private and personal but the experience is universal to human kind. Again, my painting practice takes on an undeniable reparative or healing undercurrent that isn’t visible in either the painting process or the end result, unless I choose to share it. I don’t usually paint boats in a harbour. In fact, I know little about boating or marinas. But I do know the sun and the sea. The boats are simply supporting actors for using shapes, forms and colour to facilitate a harbouring of hope. 

Key Findings: 

There is an openness in the space offered in this paint through the boldness of the shapes. This reminds me of painting the seafloor and focusing on the close up views of the seafloor and allowing abstract elements to press against more figuratively mark making. 

Anything else: 

I like the freshness and the depth of this work. I couldn’t have stopped myself from painting this painting no matter the risks of the derivative nature of the subject. I am glad that critique didn’t create a barrier but was left as – duly noted, before I proceeded. 

Gaining Momentum When A Studio Practice Stalls

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Monday, 14 September 2026

This week has been one thing after another that has pulled me from my studio or out in the field gathering references or plein air painting. It happens but that doesn’t mean it should be allowed to erode my forward momentum. I am waiting for some new art supplies and there are other art business tasks to complete before I embark on a week-long painting trip at the end of the month. However, the truth is I have many ideas on what I want to begin in the studio and nothing is settling yet. So my solution is often to work on what I do know as a way of moving myself forward. In this case, I know for sure that I need some grounds on surfaces that are dry and ready to go. So, I begin there. 

I have begun to add Tri-Art, a Canadian brand of acrylic paints when I need replacements for my Golden acrylics that are made in the United States.

This is one of my many small moves to help protect and build our Canadian economy. The principle is that we can do more for each other than anyone can take away from us. The Tri-Art paints do handle differently and are more fluid in consistency but I am willing to give them a try, especially for grounds which I want thin anyway. We each must do everything we can, consistently and repeatedly, as citizens and as small businesses.

Now, I have two larger linen canvas and three small boards ready to go. Ta-da!

That is likely all the painting I will get done today but it was necessary and important work in preparation for another day. I am now not stalled. I have moved forward in a meaningful way to support the next couple of weeks of my painting practice. 

What about you? What do you do when you are working on a project and get stalled? 

Now I am off to check the mail and see if I have a notice in the mailbox for those art supplies I am waiting for to arrive. 

Oyster Bay Late August Painting Data Collection

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Monday, 7 September 2026

Painting Data Collection 

Title: Oyster Bay Late AugustDate Completed: Friday, 28 August 2026
Materials: acrylic on linen board 
Size: 8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 x 0.51 cm)

Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 5

This is a plein air contemporary impressionist quick acrylic study to capture sensory information in the moment. 

Reference Gathering: 

The references for this work were observations in the moment as I stood on the top of an exposed piece of sandstone in front of my easel in Oyster Bay on (what is now called) Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada. 

Setting up to plein air paint at Oyster Bay in late August. Photograph by Terrill Welch, Friday, 28 August 2026.

When I began there was a couple making their way along the shoreline and a couple of construction workers building a bench up above them. Other than this, I had the place to myself for the painting session. 

Making Process:

The painting process was direct and immediate as I captured the light first and then began to build up the forms of the sandstone.

Work-in-progress — Oyster Bay Late August by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch acrylic on linen board. Photograph by Terrill Welch. Friday, 28 August 2026.

I was working with an older palette from a previous painting sketch that had ran a bit from being tilted in my plein air backpack. But it worked.

Work-in-progress 2 — Oyster Bay Late August by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch acrylic on linen board. Photograph by Terrill Welch. Friday, 28 August 2026.

Eventually I managed to get everything blocked in and was able to slightly refine the piece before my available time came to an end.

Still on the easel — Oyster Bay Late August by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch acrylic on linen board. Photograph by Terrill Welch. Friday, 28 August 2026.

Finished Painting:

Oyster Bay Late August by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch acrylic on linen board. Completed August 28, 2026.

Making Notes:

I set the plein air easel on top of the sandstone and looked east over to the rocks exposed in a low tide. The day is pleasant with blue skies holding shapely clouds in the late August sun. I stay for a while with my brush in hand and drift through an hour of painting. It is my birthday and this is my gift to me.

Reflective Analysis:

I had been offered a chance to go out on my own while knowing someone was with my partner who has dementia but still is able to stay by himself for a few hours at a time, if set up with a note to remind him when I will be back and where I have gone. But it is always more freeing if someone is with him. It was a generous offer. She thought I could go for lunch with a friend or something for my birthday. I responded that what I would like to do is go plein air painting because I already had family coming over to visit on several different days for my birthday. She laughed and replied — of course you want to go paint for your birthday! 

Reflexive Analysis: 

One of the odd things to me about being a full time caregiver is that I do not crave time with friends or other people so much. We go out for breakfast or lunch a couple of times a week and then there are the times I see people when getting groceries or picking up produce at the Saturday market plus, I engage daily online while presenting my work. I was invited to join a philosophers café that meets once a month and I accepted as a way to have meaningful deep discussions in-person on topics of interest. This complete package of in-person engagement with others always seems like enough socializing for me. What I crave most is just a few hours at a time on my own. I can still get this but it can’t be for very long at a time. Two hours is ideal and three is stretching my partner’s ability to feel confident on his own. So when given a choice to go for lunch or go plein air painting, the painting wins. This is because I am certain that my time at the easel will offer regeneration and delight. It fills my personal bucket like nothing else has ever been able to do. Just me and nature working together for a focused 45-60 minutes. This is all it takes. Hiking the trails alone does a similar thing but painting is the very best! I always come home filled with satisfaction and refreshed. This is the reparative element to my painting practice in action. 

Key Findings: 

I thought I would do more with this small study back in the studio. But as I spent the next few days glancing at it on the window ledge amongst various other small works, I decided nothing more I did would improve my impressions of this time beside the sea. So I have left it just how it was when I packed up to come home. 

Anything else: 

I am still considering what or if I will do anything on larger surfaces with these recent small painting sketches. I am in no rush to make a decision. The weather to best enjoy painting outside with the golden fall light is brief and will soon come to an end. I can decide once the rains keep me inside more. 

Arbutus in August Painting Data Collection

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Painting Data Collection 

Title: Arbutus in August Date Completed: Wednesday, 19 August 2026
Materials: acrylic on linen board
Size: 10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.32 cm)

Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 5

This small plein air study is clearly responsive to the seasonal moment and light and has an impressionist immediacy. I can still feel the warmth of the sun on my back when I look at it. 

Reference Gathering: 

The reference was the view itself as I stood at the easel.

Still on the easel – “Arbutus mid August Study” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board. Quick plein air painting sketch at Georgina Point on Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada.

Making Process:

My making process was familiar in the sense that I wanted to catch the light references first and then build up the painting from there. 

Sketched in — “Arbutus mid August Study” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board.
Work-in-progress — “Arbutus mid August Study” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board.
Work-in-progress — “Arbutus mid August Study” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board.

Finished Painting:

“Arbutus in August” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board. Completed Wednesday, 19 August 2026.

Making Notes:

I focus on catching the full range of my sensory experience in the small plein air painting from the light breeze to breaking waves, seagulls squawking and the feel of the sun on my shoulders and the dryness of the acrylic paint on my brush as it contacts the linen surface. There is a powdery dry feeling mingling with the coolness from the sea to the mid August air. I linger after packing up. The moment is pleasant and yet holds a warning, like splitting the winter’s wood on a warm summer’s day. That freshness foreshadows the coming of shorter days and brisk winds and heavy rains. This arbutus tree will be ready and so will I.

This is a quick plein air painting sketch at Georgina Point on Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada and adds to my reference work for my current “Close to Home” series. The range of brushstrokes are impressionist in a painting language that I find best facilitates my sensory conversation with nature.

The painting is already listed so you are welcome to visit my online gallery if you wish at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/arbutus-in-august 

Reflective Analysis:

These long moments of observation while plein air painting anchor me within the seasons and the rhythm of my daily living. A walk or a photoshoot doesn’t have the same sustained intensity of experience that standing at the easel in front of my subject while the lights and shadows progress with an unstoppable certainty. It is that tension between a full stop and infinity which spirals endlessly as I squint and make yet another mark on the surface of the canvas. 

Reflexive Analysis: 

There are things I do where I feel the strength of every cell that is engaged in preserving my life force. The intensity of plein air painting is right near the top of this list of things. I seem to become permeable with my surroundings through my all encompassing sensory awareness that results from settling in with nature. This is the reparative or healing aspect of my work in its most tangible form. It is not a state that I maintain for more than about 45 or 60 minutes at a time but the effect of these painting sessions can last for hours and even days with the distinct possibility of tapping back into them every time I look at the sketch or use it as a reference for a larger work in the studio. It feels like muscle or cellular memory that is stored in various parts of my body and then used and replenished as I view the sketch or work on a new work that recalls that moment through the sketch. Most often these sketches are less about experimenting and much more about gathering information in substantial abundance that it can be used later on. 

Key Findings: 

I have a habit of either dismissing my quick painting sketches or else expecting too much from them. They are my first impressions of an idea or composition and complete in their own right. 

Anything else: 

Not at this time. 

Memories of Mornings by the Studio Window Painting Data Collection

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Painting Data Collection 

Title: Memories of Mornings by the Studio WindowDate Completed: Wednesday, 19 August 2026
Materials: Acrylic on linen board
Size: 8 x 10 inches (25.4 x 20.32 cm)


Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 5

This work is a quick impressionist study. Attention has been paid to light, relationships between elements and sensory records of the fragrance of dark coffee, fresh morning air through an open window and the softens of wool socks cozying around bare feet sticking out from under the edge of a blanket. 

Reference Gathering: 

References for this study are minimal with most mark making relying on repeated mornings of similar moments that created a bank of memories. 

But there are two images that provide a starting point. 

Sun catching the hill as seen from the chair beside the studio window. Photograph by Terrill Welch Sunday 28 June 2026.
Mornings in the chair of the studio window. Photograph by Terrill Welch Sunday 28 June 2026.

Making Process:

The making process is equally sparse because once I settled down to paint, I forgot to take many photographs as the work developed. But there are a few. 

Work-in-progress collage of images for Memories of Mornings by the Studio Window by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board.

Finished Painting:

Memories of Mornings by the Studio Window by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board. Completed Wednesday, 19 August 2026.

Making Notes:

So many mornings seated in the studio window with coffee and breakfast just like this morning. I worked from memory though there are references. My attention drifted from what I might be reading to the dark savoured bitterness of the coffee then over to where the rising sun is catching the far hill in the valley. The fields are cut and dry and a cool breeze is coming in the window next to the one I am sitting beside. There is a precious sense of optimism swinging on the branches of the fir trees. I sigh and blink my way into the day. This quick sketch is a brief reminder of something that as of yet has no words other than the importance of waking up.

Here is a digital room view for size context. 

Digital viewing room with Memories of Mornings by the Studio Window by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on linen board.

Reflective Analysis:

Mornings have always been an important part of my day and this appreciation has deepened over the years. Though I most often rise early it is not a busy time of day. I like to wake up before others can have any demands on my time or my thoughts. Sometimes, this is only a brief ten minutes. Other times I can be gifted a couple of hours. It all feels like the intervention of chance really. I used to swear that my young children heard my eyes flutter open and then they leaped out of bed so as not to miss out on anything. Now, my partner often does the same. But there is always a chance that everyone will sleep just a little longer and I can watch the day begin, wrapped up cozy, from one window or the other. 

Reflexive Analysis: 

Strong dark roast black coffee is my morning beverage of choice and comes with a whole ritual of hand grinding (by hand, no electric whirring noises for me) locally roasted coffee beans. The beans are coarsely ground for a 30 year old stainless steel insulated French press. Once brewed, a cup is poured into a favourite Italian mug and the rest is put into a heated stainless steel thermos that takes me most of the morning to drink. This ritual is a mix of childhood references of the practices of my parents and a west coast of Canada coffee culture that started developing around about the late 1980’s, early 1990’s, while I was going to the University of Victoria with two young children as a single parent, who also worked part time while going to school full time. Now, when I sit peacefully in the art studio chair by the window, still in my pajamas, drinking my whole first cup of coffee while it is hot, without having it answer questions, sign notes for school, add a child’s birthday party coming up on the weekend to my calendar, be reminded to pick someone up after school, I feel particularly blessed. I loved parenting and yet, I am still thrilled when my mornings begin by easing into the day instead of starting at full throttle. 

Key Findings: 

When I think back, I remember one of my high school principals who picked me up while hitchhiking in our small village to the place I was living a few miles away in the rural farmlands. He was very clear that, though I had graduated grade twelve, I was going to grow up to be poor white trash. I was unmarried, pregnant with my first child and not yet 19 years old. I mean — who says this to a young kid finding her way after having made some difficult choices!? I am ever-so-glad that I simply just didn’t believe him. I have always had a strong inner self-motivating pull to problem-solve around ways to achieve whatever is of most driving interest to me. These ritualized morning coffees are the foundation for my thinking and of my organizing structures. It is when I prioritize the items written into my calendar into the order that either must be done that day or that I have the most desire to complete. It is also where I look ahead over the coming weeks and months and see what needs to be refined and it is when I measure how well I am fulfilling any intentions I might have set. This small sketch holds all of this for me. 

Anything else: 

It is usually the case that we can accomplish far more than we and others think we can. There is a cost of course and this can’t be discounted. This isn’t usually what stops us from trying. More often than not it is a fear of failure or fear of something awful happening. I have learned to ask myself during my morning coffee — what is the worst that can happen and can I live with it? What is the worst that will happen if I do and what is the worst that will happen if I don’t? If I can live with the worst in relation to the decision I most want to make, that will generally be the route I will take. Who knew a small painting study of a person sitting in a window having a morning coffee could hold so much? 

Defining “Close to Home” as a focus within my nature-centric, reparative painting practice

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Monday, 17 August 2026

“Close to home” at first, brings up familiarity, safety and comfort. It is where I live my daily life most of the time. Geographically, these days “close to home” is usually limited to within a day’s drive in any direction which gives the concept physical parameters. There is an ordinariness that comes with these sustained intimately observed passages of time in one place doing “the usual” things such as getting groceries, hanging laundry on the line, grinding the morning coffee beans, paying bills online, going to the dentist, getting the car serviced, working in the yard, hugging my partner, children, grandchildren and friends between taking long hikes, painting in the studio and promoting the gallery and artworks. I ask myself, why is this focus on “Close to Home” in my painting practice important? 

Developing red collage paper by Terrill Welch. August 8, 2026.

To answer this question is to first observe aspects of my contextualized autoethnographic references. The first and most obvious factor is that I am a full-time, primary caregiver for a partner that can quite happily no longer go further than the geographical territory mentioned above. I remain close to home because, to provide the best care for someone else, I must. The alternatives are to place my special human in respite care or to have someone come to stay with them. Neither of these options are easily workable in practice. By the time I get someone or someplace up to speed on this special being’s needs and them familiar with something they don’t want to do, the brief break becomes more of a traumatic ordeal for both of us than an actual opportunity. At least, this has been our experience so far. Eventually when regular weekly respite breaks become necessary, we will then have someone familiar providing additional support on ongoing. This might then present some opportunities for longer breaks for me to be able to at least go see my elderly parents which is a 7-10 day round trip visit away. For now, primary caregiving responsibilities take a central role, as a wife and as the human that is closest to the person in need. There are children. But the personal care needs and ongoing vascular dementia monitoring and prompting have gone well beyond their comfort levels and therefore not an option except possibly during a short term emergency until other care could be put in place. Community health home support services have been limited and expensive for what is provided. This leaves just me for now. We muddle through as best we can together which for now is pretty well. As an almost 68 year old white woman of settler ancestry, living on a rural small island on the southwest coast of Canada, I am resourceful, resilient, organized and pragmatic with a strong work ethic. I will face poverty level cash flows if/when the time comes to manage only on my own pensions. For now, there is enough to comfortably support both of us. But this reality is partly why I spent the past two years completing my MA Fine Art degree. It is a way to recognize the seriousness with which I take my painting practice that then might possibly lead to my artwork offering a small financial buffer if it is needed in the future. Global instability may make this a difficult proposition to realize but it would be even less of a possibility as an older woman artist without doing this degree. 

Yellow gauche covered collage paper by Terrill Welch. August 8, 2026.

This brings up other aspects about being “Close to Home” including a sense of loss of freedom, of heavy sadness/grief about slowly losing someone to their disease, as well as facing my own limitations and mortality. How long can I reasonably keep up with these responsibilities? How long can I manage living on this rural island as the only person who is able to drive?

Three sheets of collage paper created by Terrill Welch. August 8, 2026.

Then I return again to my painting practice and its central role in making all challenging situations much more possible, pleasurable and endurable. This is especially true if I turn my painting practice directly towards what is challenging. In doing this, I seem to find my footing and my strength as well as my joy and pleasure with simply being alive.

These are the thoughts that came to mind as I created the collage paper, cut it up and then decided I wanted to paint instead. So, I packed up the paper cuttings and put them in a bag for another day.

Collage paper cuttings and a sketched ready to paint in Terrill Welch’s art studio.

I expect to have much more to discover about my focus on “Close to Home” as I proceed but for now, it is time to work on a small painting sketch featuring morning coffee in my studio chair.

Lady Arbutus Painting Data Collection

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Painting Data Collection 

Title: Lady Arbutus Date Completed: Wednesday, 5 August 2026
Materials: oil on linen covered birch wood
Size: 14 x 11 inches (36 x 28 cm)

Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 4-7 

The background offers a loose abstract network of brushmarks while the tree is given figurative prominence with large shapes holding the composition within a visual space of warm morning summer light. 

Reference Gathering: 

This is a commissioned work and stems from an art collector’s shared love of this specific arbutus tree that resembles the long legs of a woman elegantly reaching for the sky. I have references going back years but chose just a few, between August 2023 and August 2025.

Collection of reference images between August 30, 2023 and August 20, 2025 by Terrill Welch in preparation for painting “Lady Arbutus” in August 2026.

Making Process:

My studio making process proceeded over a few days in 2-3 hour painting sessions. I required pauses to really listen to the painting and what it was asking of me. I also mentally invited the art collector into my musings with nature so that I could draw on the abundance of influences between us three. The focus is on a portrait of the arbutus tree while keeping a sense of context and hints of the ocean behind and beside the viewer. I have a special relationship with not just the arbutus tree but also the polar trees on the middle left. There are very few on Mayne Island but they grew in abundance around my childhood home. 

Collage of work-in-progress images for Lady Arbutus by Terrill Welch 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch wood.

Finished Painting:

“Lady Arbutus” by Terrill Welch, 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch wood. Completed Wednesday, 5 August 2026.

For scale, here is the painting in a digital viewing room.

Digital room view – Lady Arbutus by Terrill Welch, 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch wood.

Making Notes:

A ferry whistles in Active Pass on the other side of the island and echoes a response to the August sun pressing towards it through the trees. The calm ocean behind me pools at the bottom of the ridge next to a group of scrubby polar trees. Deep shadows offer a counterbalance to the bright trunks of the arbutus trees and rich soft greens of the grove. What would it like to be this arbutus tree tucked in next to a few strong firs beside the Salish Sea? I can feel the effort of stepping up on the weathered sandstone beside it as I traverse the narrow trail from the point. I like to pause for a few moments and just share its company before moving on. The artwork is a complex interconnected view to render in paint between dancing sunlight and thick growth reaching for the skies. Much is left to interpretation in an integrated network of suggestive figurative to abstract mark making.

Reflective Analysis:

For this painting, the complexity of vegetation and terrain was demanding to navigate into paint on a surface without over simplifying or offering so much information that the poetry of the moment is lost. I held significant pauses as I worked in order to make decisions about the order of things and then worked in a flurry for a while only to pause again to consider. The types of brushstrokes were decided by subject as I was mindful of only offering just enough to bring the work to life and present the essence of being this specific arbutus tree on this specific day. 

Reflexive Analysis: 

Commissions are different from work that is solely decided by my commitment and curiosity. I do have a formal process that allows maximum artistic freedom but it is still unique from my self-directed body of work. With my commission process, the art collector chooses the subject and size and a price is determined. I gather my own references and then paint the subject as I see fit. The art collector then decides if the work is to their satisfaction. If not, the work goes into my inventory and I try again. Payment for an artwork happens once a final decision to accept a painting has been made. This gives me maximum freedom as the painter and is the lowest risk for the art collector. Over the years this has been a win-win for everyone. That said, I only accept a very few commissions each year as they frequently take me away from whatever I am working in my studio practice. Not this painting though. It fits nicely into my current focus. 

For this painting, I am aware that there is an alignment between how I approach my work and the lived experience of the art collector. So there is the Lady Arbutus tree and her immediate environment on this specific day that is then enriched by around nineteen years of my having walked and sat next to her in all kinds of weather and throughout the seasons. Then there is my awareness of the art collector’s numerous similar experiences and her many conversations with me over about half as many years. The art collector has entrusted me to bridge these various experiences and bring them to the surface of the painting in as much of an unencumbered way as I can imagine. But influences are like seed burs. They sink their hooks into my  experiences and come along for the ride every time I dip my brush into the paint. It is something I must notice and also make peace with in order to bring the best I have to whatever work I am creating. Like all experiences, painting is not a pure isolated practice. The process is embedded in a multitude of interrelated and related variables. From this sea of information, a painting comes to rest uneasily on a surface as if by some alchemical, divine intervention. Even though the brushstrokes are made by my own hand, from my own observations and study, no one really owns these results in a lineage sort of way. It would be like saying that the dried thyme added to a stew was the only ingredient that mattered. It is important but, as with the painting, it wouldn’t be much without everything else. 

Key Findings: 

This painting was a great reminder to trust my creative process and stick with it, even when small doubts creep in around the edges. 

Anything else: 

The directness of working on this painting reminds me that I can benefit from creating without direct canvas and paint contact, even if it does not result in finished work. While I finished this painting, I also made some painted paper to cut up for collage puzzles. These never seem to amount to anything but they do offer a sort of different texture to my practice. Now that I have finished this work, I have set my paints aside to further explore these bits of hand coloured paper while I think about my overall research question and working definitions for this next body of work – Close To Home. 

The Everyday Beauty of Art: Reflections on ‘Lady Arbutus’

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Monday, 3 August 2026

I am standing at the easel this morning and decided I would write while taking a teabreak. The painting catches the glare from the late morning sun outside the art studio window. I leave it and the brushes where they were put down and glance at the finished painting with almost dry edges that I thankfully had remembered to cover before I started. 

An early August morning in the art studio of Terrill Welch with work-in-progress.

A rough sketch had been completed yesterday and set up on my old French Box easel so that I could settle right into painting this morning. 

A rough sketch by Terrill Welch, on a 14 x 11 inch linen covered birch board surface, is set on a French Box easel with the palette below Sunday evening in preparation for the next morning’s painting session.

This is a commissioned work and stems from an art collector’s shared love of this specific arbutus tree that resembles the long legs of a woman elegantly reaching for the sky. I have references going back years but chose just a few, between August 2023 and August 2025. It seems fitting that I would begin painting it in August 2026.

Collection of reference images between 30 August 2023 and 20 August 2025 by Terrill Welch in preparation for painting “Lady Arbutus” in August 2026.

While I am painting, I do not think of much but rather focus on what I am remembering and feeling about this specific tree and this specific place which is no longer publicly accessible since much of the land around it was purchased as part of a conservation land use agreement. I cherish and I am deeply grateful for the vision of the landowners and those that worked to acquire the lands for this reason. It is a small price to pay to respect the request to stay off of the very point of Edith Point that is still held as private land. This aside, I lean into my memories again. 

work-in-progress on the easel of “Lady Arbutus” by Terrill Welch, 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch board.

There is a ferry whistle in Active Pass on the other side of the island that echoes a response to the August sun pressing towards it through the trees. A calm ocean behind me pools in the bottom left of the painting. It isn’t there in the reference. This won’t matter and it might not even stay to the finish line. For now it needs to be there. Deep shadows offer a counterbalance to the bright trunks of the arbutus trees and rich soft greens of stunted poplar trees in the grove. What would it like to be this arbutus tree tuck in next to a few strong firs next to the Salish Sea? Answering this question is a significant part of the job of this painting. Though it may indeed capture a beautiful moment, that is not its purpose. It is a working painting and will bring a sense of being close to home and all that this means. This is true for most of my paintings. They are not collected as decorative objects or for status or for their uniqueness but rather for good company! 

This brings me to a book I am reading and a question. Can paintings have an everyday use, like a hand turned pottery mug or a hand knit sweater? The Japanese philosopher, art historian, aesthete and poet, Soetsu Yanagi (1889 – 1961), proposes that true beauty does not come from straining to be remarkable. It comes from a kind of forgetting. Mingei or “crafts of the people”, is used to describe an approach and an object that “must be wholesomely and honestly made for practical use” (Yanagi, 2019, p. 5). These objects have been made without a need to be special or important and without grasping for attention. Further, the objects grow in beauty by their daily use. They are objects that have been made well and keep us company as we move through our ordinary lives. Yanagi in his book The Beauty of Everyday Things is speaking about anonymous folk craft and something that is different from what we understand as aristocratic contemporary fine art. However, I want to consider how my paintings might be and most often are acquired for their use value — not for decoration, not for spectacle or status but rather for daily company. This daily company is of course the underlying practice in which my brush touched the canvas in the first place. The paintings are the result of my conversation with nature that then invites the viewer into these exchanges. Skill, practice, the quality of the materials matter, just like they do for the craft worker making a mug or weaving a basket. The  works are not about being unique, though this over time happens without this being the intent. I mostly want to examine how a painting, as a crafted object, has a use value in our ordinary day, beyond an exploration of an idea that would lend itself to being considered contemporary art which, for the most part, is less interested in skill mastery or material quality. More importantly, can a painting hold both these philosophical and practical frameworks at the same time – humble usefulness for daily company and the successful exploration of a unique idea or concept? These are the questions I am asking as I read while knowing that my work does not have a physical use, definitely is not anonymous, and often it is not, broadly speaking, unique enough to fit easily into contemporary art sensibilities (presuming contemporary art can genuinely claim such a thing as sensibility). 

Well, teabreak is over. It is time I set this musing aside and get back to the easel and see where this painting takes me next.

Work-in-progress on “Lady Arbutus” by Terrill Welch, 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch board.

Reference list:

Yanagi, S. (2019). The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Books.

Podcast Episode: Painting Nature And Grief

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Pip: Welcome to Creative Potager, where the paint is still wet and the questions are older than the canvas.

Mara: This episode draws from Terrill Welch’s recent posts — we’re moving through landscape painting on the Salish Sea shoreline, the pauses and decisions that shape a painting mid-process, and the harder territory of grief and creative repair.

Pip: Let’s start with the arbutus trees and what it means to keep returning to them.

Painting Arbutus Trees on the Salish Sea Shore

Mara: The first post opens at seven in the morning on a sandstone shoreline — the question underneath it is what it means to paint the same subject repeatedly and still find it necessary.

Pip: The post frames it directly. The setup is a hillside at dawn, references gathered, canvas waiting — and then this: “I have painted these arbutus trees many times but I am never done with them. There is a spiritual connection that seems to happen with arbutus trees.”

Mara: So the repeated subject isn’t a habit or a comfort zone — it’s an ongoing conversation. The tree is a place to put something down, literally: losses and grief as compost, released into the soil rather than carried.

Pip: And the companion piece, Solace Between Sea and Sky Painting Data Collection, makes that concrete. The finished painting took nineteen days of focused work — plus, as the post puts it, fifty years of practice.

Mara: The data collection post is unusually candid about why the solace was needed. New caregiving routines, exhaustion, a partner with dementia. The arbutus tree becomes, in that context, a symbol of quiet, determined striving.

Pip: Which is exactly what Martin Gayford argues painting demands — the post quotes him: “Making a truly powerful and original painting is very hard.” The response here isn’t to aim for brilliant. It’s to keep the conversation going rather than go silent.

Mara: That’s the real stakes of the segment — not mastery, but refusal to stop speaking.

Listening to What the Canvas Needs

Mara: Answering the Painter’s Questions sits inside the same painting’s timeline and asks something specific: what do you do when the work stalls and won’t proceed?

Pip: The answer is — you wait. The post describes leaving the canvas “sitting in an awful awkwardness as if caught in an elaborate pose of painter’s frozen tag.”

Mara: What follows isn’t paralysis. It’s a walk, a birthday, an hour of painting when the window opens. The post frames every decision — abstract the foliage or not, make the tree pop — as provisional, each answer undoing several others already made.

Pip: Painting is a process of endless decisions and often there are no right answers. Just better ones, eventually.

Grief, Caregiving, and the Reparative Turn

Pip: The Reparative Turn in Painting names the hardest territory directly — what does a painting practice mean when you’re watching someone you love decline?

Mara: The post anchors itself in a specific art-historical idea: “What does the reparative turn in my painting practice mean under these circumstances? I am surmising it flexes on my desire, for now, to stay grounded and rooted on this earthly plain of existence.”

Pip: Monet painting beside his dying wife. Munch recording his sister’s death. Those are the predecessors named here — but the post draws a careful distinction. Those were final moments. Caregiving dementia is the long preceding journey of knowing and watching and bracing.

Mara: The painting that launches from this post is the same arbutus tree, the same lemon-yellow ground. The creative act and the grief work are not separate projects.

Pip: Three segments, one shoreline, one persistent question about why we keep making things when everything is hard.

Mara: The next episode will show us where that question leads — keep painting, as the post says. Just keep painting.

Note: this is a fictional dialogue created with WordPress AI using content from Terrill Welch’s recent Creative Potager posts to make a podcast summary for people who like to listen as well as read.

The posts used are:

The Reparative Turn in Painting: Embracing Grief and Creativity
The Spiritual Connection in Painting Arbutus Trees
Answering the Painter’s Questions

And…

Solace Between Sea and Sky Painting Data Collection

Solace Between Sea and Sky Painting Data Collection

/ Terrill Welch / 1 Comment

Painting Data Collection 

Title: Solace Between Sea and SkyDate Completed: Saturday, July 25, 2026
Materials: oil on canvas
Size: 31.5 x 27.5 inches (80 x 70 cm)

Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 

This work sits primarily at “4” with Camille Corot and April Gornik (Impressionism is a five and in the middle between figurative at 1 and full abstraction at 10). Yet it is a closer more intimate view that has us crouched next to the arbutus tree for company. The foliage above and below is abstracted but not noticeably so. The rest is clearly a figurative tree, sandstone shore, sea, sky and distant shoreline.

Reference Gathering: 

My references are from an early morning walk that saw me at this location on Edith Point at just before 7:00 am on Monday, July 6 2026. The sun had risen a couple of hours earlier but there were still hints of warm morning light. There is the arbutus tree of course but it was the totality of the morning’s walk that will later resonate in a more complete memory onto the canvas. The sandstone shore wasn’t just viewed. It was walked on and sat on while I ran my fingers over its sandpaper-like surface. The sea sounds were as soft as warm morning air flickering across my cheeks. There were other trees close by but I chose the arbutus and in the end its company is outside of our view. 

Reference inspiration for Solace Between Sea and Sky by Terrill Welch.

Making Process:

My painting process begins with a few composition lines. I have the notion of painting the tree “From the Ground Up” so that I can feel the forest overhead as well as under my feet. Yet, how will I create such a feeling? I also wanted to be standing “with” the arbutus tree rather than looking “at” it. I am listening to the arbutus tree tell me its story of time in what is a long and meaningful conversation. The painting process takes place over 12 days with moments of pause so layers can dry. But also pauses for the painting to decide what it needed from me. The last image in the collage is not the final painting yet but all significant decisions had been made at this point. My simplifications and exaggerations are in full view. Memory is often like that. We leave things out and make up other things to capture the inner resonance of what we want to convey. 

Painting process for Solace Between Sea and Sky by Terrill Welch.

Finished Painting:

Solace Between Sea and Sky by Terrill Welch, 31.5 x 27.5 inch oil on canvas. Completed July 25, 2026.

Making Notes:

Early in the morning I hiked along the outside trail early of the Edith Point Conservation Lands next to Strait of Georgia. During the summer the sun rises far enough north to slam this shore in brilliant sunlight for the first view hours of a day. The receding tide leaves small pools of seawater along the lower parts of the sandstone shore. Low clouds on the horizon still have a bit of an orange popsicle hue. What might it be like to be this specific arbutus tree rooted deeply along the high part of the bank and stretching day after day for every casual ray of sunlight? It is a quiet determined striving that I can take solace in. I soak up the moment for as long as it can last. Seconds really. Or maybe an eternity. Each brushstroke contains purpose and random execution at once. It is not the mystery of discover so much as knowing where I am and wanting it stay. This painting opens up under my first viewer’s gaze. I can feel the grandness of expanse filled with early morning’s comfort and possibilities just as I remembered it during my hike. 

Digital Room View for size reference:

Digital room view using the Canvy app showing at scale “Solace Between Sea and Sky” by Terrill Welch.

Reflective Analysis:

At this specific time, I am beginning a new thematic body of work that I have yet to form into a rigorous research question. I just know, I want to be with the trees and look down onto the seafloor where I have spent the past two years at the tideline painting close up work that I composed primarily vertically into “landscapes of the small” or “child’s view” compositions. One must hold the expanse of the shoreline above one’s head doing this work. I want to hold a grand view perspective again, even if I still crouch close to the earth. 

Reflexive Analysis: 

The title has the “solace” as a primary reference. I find in a moment of solace, as here in the company of the arbutus tree and taking in the sea and sky, there is also acknowledgment of pain or grief. The desire or need for solace necessarily describes the other. From my first viewer’s gaze, maybe due to my own painter’s hand, I can fully sense both of these halves that make a whole. I was raw and tired as I pushed hard to get the last of my assignment materials ready for assessment. We had lost our home support services due to retirement so my partner and I were working out how we were going to best do his showers together, just the two of us. We found a way but new routines are harder, for both of us, when someone has dementia. But in the end we came up with an even better solution than how he was showering before and a method that allowed him more independents under my prompts and supervision. So this arbutus tree is not just comfort but also a symbol or inner strength, perseverance and resilience. Standing with this tree, I have company during my most challenging doubts and fears and exhaustion. I come away from the view and the easel ready to continue and step just a little lighter from the warmth of such an early morning expanse and the recognition that all things are interconnected and whole, for this brief moment. 

Key Findings: 

I had the desire to keep a wide range of brush marks between figurative and abstract but that isn’t what the painting asked for and I knew better than to question its lead. The process from inspiration to completion of the work took 19 days plus another two days to organize my thoughts and data collection to write about the process. So if anyone asks how long it took, the answer is 50 years of a nature-centric, reparative painting practice plus 21 days of focused attention. This work doesn’t come easy. The paintings are moulded out of the blood flow that makes up my full sensory life and contemplated experiences. 

Anything else: 

The solution to an attempt that falls short of my intention is to try again. Keep painting, I tell myself. Just keep painting. 

What might you do to continue with something that you haven’t quite yet succeeded in accomplishing?