Let’s count them. There are eighteen photography sketches taken within 45 minutes of each other and no further apart than fifty steps along a chunk of the Mayne Island shoreline. It is a painter’s morning for gathering reference material. Why bother you might ask? Well, it is about seeing and mostly about how we see and choose to construct our world using sensory information.
I woke just before daylight. After blinking several times and making coffee I decide to go and see how the sun is making out.
She is getting a little slower to rise on this late August morning but still beat to the shore.
It is a gentle rising with a soft elegance that never fails to release the last bit of tension between my shoulder blades.
I gather myself together and glance narrow and long… searching.
And searching again.
Low clouds play with the light as I look south.
Back around I turn and venture deeper into exploring just this one aspect of the shoreline.
Which composition is most satisfying?
Which elements do we see most clearly?
Is it the sea or the land we most sympathize with?
I want to reach into the camera and pluck out my own secrets!
But I cannot.
Like the blue heron I can only keep fishing using my past experience and best guesses. Maybe this one!?
No not that one replies the heron.
The sandstone chortles and then hefts a sigh, as if in commiseration, about this endless seeking.
Calm but slightly dejected I turn around yet again. I haven’t unraveled this dawn yet.
After a few steps, I turn slowly and then crouch low… there…
and then again here….
Morning has broken and the landscape is shattered by my viewer’s eye! I must leave now with my quick photography sketches. I must take these fragments and make something of them just as we do with every image we created in our mind’s eye. these are my few soft gestures of contemplation before picking up my brushes and rushing them over a canvas with heaps of expectation and too much substance to do any of it justice.
What has your morning brought to you?
© 2015 Terrill Welch, All rights reserved.
Liberal usage granted with written permission. See “About” for details.
Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch
From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada
For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com
Creative Potager 
The morning has brought me back to the island I love.
Thank you, Terrill. It was interesting to take another peek at your process.
Glad you enjoyed it Leanne. I feel like I have been away much longer than I have been from home and studio. I am looking forward to September and digging into an extended period of work.
Terrill — I love when you wrote: “…and mostly about how we see and CHOOSE to construct our world using sensory information.” The word “choose” jumped out at me.
I always enjoy your work. The heron, and the second-to-the-last photos are my favorite.
What has my morning brought to me?
An article that’s completely ready for submission. Len’s out and about, so I think I’;; sit on the porch with Willa and a glass of wine to celebrate 🙂
I am not surprised Laurie that you spotted that “choose” word. I intellectually understand how we choose to construct what we see, feel and remember but it is still a never-ending delight to explore exactly how I do this. Cheers to a completed submission!
I am not sure I would ever go back home, I would wish to capture the beauty here as much as I can. This is journey is what makes your paintings so alive, so appealing, there is intention for the attention, there is “oh let’s just go out here and paint today.” There is let me be with all of this for a time, let nature speak and daze!!
Beautiful and wonderful!
Thank you Jeff and you are right in that my work is most often – lets go be with this place for a time, really soak it up! Then I can paint the landscape with confidence.
This alluring terrain offers many opportunities for physical beauty to be captured by your camera and subsequently by your magical brush. I did love those roving questions in stream-of-consciousness mode and somehow I felt like I was taking a walk with you. Such picturesque wonderment is the source of inspiration.
The morning in these parts as of late is showing us just how hot the sun can project its rays as we move in September. 🙂
Where does the time go Sam? I read your comment when you wrote it and decided to slip back later to reply. I certainly didn’t expect it to be a month later! Well, from your updates over on Wonders in the Dark, the weather has settled nicely into fall and cooler temperatures. We have been hainv intermittent rain but mostly beautiful open fall sunshine with just a touch of coolness off the water and in the evenings making it pleasant for hiking and walking the trails. All the best and shall catch up with you again soon. Finally got another post up today! Yippee!