what seen is not always there

May 27, 2010May 28, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 29 Comments

Clouds break and the late sun rushes in, leaving its mysterious glow cascading across the valley. In this moment the turning of earth is visible and tangible – not just a known fact.

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Looking east finds the familiar last light from the west at the edge of the forest…

It is beautiful but not what I am feeling. Something is missing. I head to the digital darkroom musing about what the camera couldn’t catch. I went to work to find what it was I had experienced – teasing it out from between the pixels….

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Sprout Question: What do you do when your creativity on the outside doesn’t match what you are experiencing inside?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Eagle over the moon

May 25, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 20 Comments

Through joyful tears and laughter the gifts are opened.

Friends prepare for a round of games. I slip outside, where clouds break, allowing slivers of evening sun and a rainbow across the way.

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The ocean is within touching distance and the tide is on the ebb, bringing a young eagle closer to shore – hunting.

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A bridal shower and an eagle over the moon – a good omen I think.

Sprout Question: Where has your creativity recently found something new in the familiar?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Choose Your Dare

May 20, 2010June 22, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 30 Comments

On Tuesday we answered the sprout question about taking your creativity for a swimming lesson. In our conversation we discovered that some of us had specific waters you wanted to swim, others would go to the deep end of the pool and still others would wade knowing that swimming was not for them. Each response is perfect for the individual answering the sprout question. What we must each do is choose our personal dare, and then perfect our creative skills and strengths with integrity, commitment, joy and humour.

For example, I am absolutely fascinated by outcrops of big rocks. I observe their majestic beauty from a distance and up close – even possibly boring you with so many photos of cliff faces and sandstone.

beyond

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And I clamour over their surface as long as I can do it without rock climbing.

time

The thought of me rock climbing makes me laugh out loud and giggle for a long time. This is just not going to happen. I know it is safe when done properly. I can imagine why others may take on the hours and hours of skill and strength building activities to perfect this skill but… I can’t even watch the young woman in this photo climb.

Josie climbing in Squamish May 15 2010 photo by Sebastian Powell

This close up is almost too unnerving for me to look at.

Shall we get a real close look?

With creativity, as with other things in life, we must know where our strengths and desires meet. Yet we also want to stretch and push the edges just to check to see which challenge is right for us right now. So for now, I will photograph and paint the large boulders and rock faces and Josie, my daughter, will climb them… when I am not looking.

Sprout Question: What personal creative dare are you choosing?

Note: A special thank you to Sebastian Powell, the ACMG (Association of Canadian Mountain Guides) guide of The Boulders Climbing Gym, for this photo of Josie climbing.

Liberal usage granted with written permission. See “About” for details.

Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Canada Geese on family swim day

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 24 Comments

I happened to see a family of Canada Geese going for an early morning dip in Georgia Strait at Georgina Point on Mayne Island… would you like to join them?

Time for our morning swim everyone!

Yes that means you too. Now move along...

Don't worry we will show you how it is done.

There easy does it...

Now stay close.

I am so hungry

Me too!... Tasty little morsels

Keep an eye out for junior.

Well, I think they have it figured out.

Oops! There they go again...If you're not careful you are going to be eagle breakfast!

Everyone look right... that's it, beautiful!

I could hear the goslings’ little peeping voices as they swam along. And the eagle flew off to see if he couldn’t find a salmon for a morning snack but he sure watched closely before giving up on a small goose feed.

Sprout Question: If you were to take your creativity for a swimming lesson where would it be?

Bonus: Hatchlings are covered with yellowish down and their eyes are open. They leave the nest when 1-2 days old, depending on weather, and can walk, swim, feed, and even dive. The mother goose leads the way on the first family swim and the father goose takes up the rear. Young Canada Geese or goslings grow so quickly that they are virtually indistinguishable from adults in only about nine weeks. With a lifespan of up to twenty-five years, the oldest known wild Canada Goose was 30 years 4 months old. They mate for life with very low “divorce rates,” and pairs remain together throughout the year. Geese mate “assortatively,” larger birds choosing larger mates and smaller ones choosing smaller mates; in a given pair, the male is usually larger than the female. References – mostly http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Goose/lifehistory and a few other brief stops on a googling wild goose chase.

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Riot of Colour

May 13, 2010May 17, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

Several times during the past couple of days it seems that chance, good luck or divine intervention has presented the most amazing experiences. One of these was when the sun came through our skylight and touched on a large bouquet of flowers we had on the table in the great room. The Astramaris (or Alstroemeria) were particularly stunning with their various shades and shadows of yellow and orange.

And this is my personal favourite.

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When we pay attention, there are as many moments to experience amazement as there are moments. Attention is about seeing and feeling each object for the first time. This way it is always fresh and new no matter how many times we have encountered it before. Most often we see habitually using shortcuts developed by our great memories. For example, we can walk through our house without paying attention – and trip over something new that has been placed in a room because we “didn’t see it.” We have developed a habitual way of seeing as we walk from room to room. There are many practices for paying attention. I would like to know yours.

Sprout Question: How do you break free of your habitual way of seeing?

P.S. I also had the good fortune to be at Piggott Bay as a sailing ship was taking a tour of Navy Channel – I’m pretty sure I saw a pirate but you may want to have a look for yourself… http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch/art/5171261-1-sailing-ship-navy-channel

Liberal usage granted with written permission. See “About” for details.

Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Winter Sun Oil Painting

May 11, 2010August 21, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 18 Comments

There is something about the late dawn of winter sun, a bruised heaviness that seeps across the sky. I started this painting thinking it might be abstract and lighter, maybe even cheerful, but my subconscious seems to know where to take the brush. Though the quick marks of paint give impressions rather than detail… it is clearly not an abstract painting. And though colourful, I am not sure it is cheerful. In fact, I’m sure this painting is deeply melancholy with bittersweet recognition that the sun is rising… lifting, lifting, lifting us into another, and possibly, better day.

I started by brushing water (it would have been spirits but I’m using water miscible oils) and linseed oil onto the canvas. Then I began adding colour, an underpainting of sorts…

I never let it completely dry but kept working the paint into the canvas as I added more colour.

Using a good sized brush (10) I swished the sky and clouds on and softened them with a cloth and feathery brush. Then I flipped the rocks and sea loosely into place and left them like that.

I came back yesterday and tidied up a bit … as I listened to kd lang’s performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame induction of Leonard Cohen in 2006.

You might want to do that too as you take in “Winter Sun”

18X24″ by 1 3/4″ water miscible oil painting on 100% natural cotton canvas

There are a few more small edits which I will make and then replace this last image, but it is close enough to complete to share with you.

Sprout Question: What has been your latest personal discovery through your creativity?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Far Shore oil painting

May 6, 2010December 5, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 24 Comments

18X24″ by 1 3/4″ water miscible oil painting on 100% natural cotton canvas

I worked on this west coast painting much of yesterday afternoon and into the early evening. At one point I move out onto the covered deck because the natural light had faded in my loft studio. I believe it is to the “tweaking” stage or almost or maybe even completely finished. It is resting now and I will begin another while it lingers in the great room as the day’s light passes overhead. I will peer at it every now and then with a critical eye. At a later point I will take another photo for my redbubble account.

As I was working I mused on a couple of ideas. The first is something my son said when we were talking about song writing. He commented on how sometimes it is best to leave a song and start a new one that will be better rather than try to fix one that is not working. I think this is true for most creative work. Our learning is cumulative. With a certain amount of detachment, we take the work as far as we can, then release it and start again. Drawings in sand, ice sculptures and cake decorating come to mind as ways we can make marks and practice creative detachment.

Speaking of making marks, this is something humans have been doing for a long time. These markings are telling not only of our present but of our past and our imagined future. There is a collective bandwidth of creativity with most creative work gathered around the centre and much less work being created along the margins or fringes. The great work of the fringes will sometimes move to the centre of the bandwidth and new work will develop along the margins. William Blake , Claude Monet, Walt Whitman come to mind as well-known artist who worked in the margins of their time and yet held our attention until their work became accepted and even revered, at which point their creative views and style moved into the centre of the creative bandwidth. This process of margin to centre has always fascinated me because some work just falls off the margins and disappears while other creative work is shuffled into the centre. Most of us work comfortably in the full rich stream of the centre. Only some of us are compelled to work in the margins. Work in the margins is often recognizable by the name calling – bad art, lacking technique, improper, breaking the rules and shocking.

Sprout Question: Where would you place your work on the current bandwidth of creativity?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Eyes Wide Open

May 4, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 22 Comments

joyful delight

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If you want to practice being fully present in the moment, spend some time playing with children. If you want to connect your creativity to an idea for immediate expression, engage children. In the photo above we were eating limes. I was to try to capture “the lime face.” My favourite is the photo above as he is thinking about what we are going to do. In the photos below, the first one is what he thinks a lime face looks like….

pretending to lime taste

and the second is when the lime juice hit its mark.

taste of lime

I don’t often take photographs of people but every once in a while I like to capture the special people (family, friends, colleagues) in my life. A little backyard street hockey is always fun.