Fresh brush strokes, loose and easy, flow onto the canvas of a new painting.
Lusty dank seaweed brings its dark beauty to the summer sandstone shores along the inside passage on Saturna Island. My hand remembers.
The painting swells towards completion and then seems to drift and with an unexpected unsettledness. Incomplete and shifting on the canvas, I leave it for weeks sharing only a detail.
I approach it again – defining the sea and softening the mountains into a grander relationship between sea and sky – closing in the view and leaving a greater sense of more to see beyond the edges of the canvas. Finally the painting seems to settle. However, I suspect it may always seem just a little restless, inviting the viewer into the ripples at the water’s edge with one eye skittering off to the distant mountains, then back to the rocks in the foreground.
THE SEA TO ME 12 X 12 inch oil on canvas
(Original painting is now sold. Print available HERE)
SPROUT: What are you leaving unsettled for future competition?
© 2012 Terrill Welch, All rights reserved.
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
Terrill Welch online Gallery at http://terrillwelchartist.com
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Creative Potager 
Terrill – I love the juicy adjectives you used in this post: lusty, dank, swells, drift, unsettledness, restless, and skittering.
SPROUT: What are you leaving unsettled for future competition?
I’m about to leave Border’s Books where I’ve just about wrapped up an article that’s due on the 10th. It’s time to simmer on the back burner of my mind for a day or two, then I’ll wrap it up and send it off.
Thanks Laurie and this “resting period” has always felt like a critical part of any creative process. Good luck with the final string-tying of your article package!
You have a wonderful way of describing how you set your artistic hand to canvas. It is never dull and the accompanying images show us how beautifully your words find themselves in paint.
Thank you Maureen, I so glad you enjoyed the words along with the process photographs. Words seem to easily come to me just as I finish a work… they will fade with time if I don’t capture them right away.
Thank you for showing the steps! It is stunning!
You are most welcome Carolyn and welcome to Creative Potager 🙂