A Brush with Europe – an artist’s rendering coming soon

February 3, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 23 Comments

Merci, grazie, gracias, Thank you! A Brush with Europe blogging category begins for this artist who has planned a three month trip by not planning much at all. Right now the best indicator of what is going on inside my head looks something like this…

There is a poem in Leonard Cohen Book of Longing p. 46 that adequatly captures my misgivings and doubts.

The Moon

The moon is outside

I saw the great uncomplicated thing

when I went to take a like just now.

I should have looked at it longer.

I am a poor lover of the moon.

I see it all at once and that’s it

for me and the moon.

My fear is that I don’t want to be a poor lover of Paris, Venice, Florence and Barcelona. But right now three months in Europe seems too short to accomplish anything more. I am reading, watching videos, talking to people and learning as much as I can in advance. However, this just seems to increase my doubts rather than relieve them. What to do?

Well, anytime I feel like I am in over my head, which I am confident is a reasonable description of my current situation, I slow down and eat some greens.

Winter in a northern climate is not the easiest time to create a summer like salad but it can be done. Then with the addition of a good handful of pecans and a couple of warm hard-boiled eggs I a ready to go to work.

First things first – revise the travel planning list. Ah yes – return tickets from Vancouver to London and medical insurance, suitcase, RFID blocker money belt, and plugin adapters are purchased. Next, sign up for AirBnB and arrange for a caretaker house sitter. See? Not so hard. Non capisco? Mi dispiace…

What is your first response when you are in over your head?

Note: I will be starting a new blogging category for this trip called “A Brush with Europe.” I thought about setting up a separate blog but that just seemed more trouble than it was worth. Since I will be doing painting sketches, photography and writing as we travel by train from London to Venice then on to Florence, the Cote D’ Azur and Barcelona (beginning in April until near the end of June) this in-progress blog should work just fine. Besides you all know how to find me here and this way I won’t be lonely 🙂

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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

Drawn to Simplicity in the Photography and Painting Process

January 27, 2014January 27, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 7 Comments

A slow start to our Monday with heavy fog wrapping the house in warm silence. The dark black coffee is good.

The youngest step-son is here visiting adding a sprinkle of laughter to our mix. My sweetheart is being host and making breakfast and more coffee. Life is good and content as I hear the pages of the Saturday Globe and Mail turning slowly just outside my view from the studio in the loft.

With this backdrop, I am musing about the relationship of space to our lives and our well-being. I want to share an image that is my own laptop background at the moment called SERENE SEA…

I haven’t made it available yet for purchase as I am not sure if its power and lure goes beyond my own satisfaction. You see, these rare moments of spacial expanse with such simplicity are rare both in nature and life. I long for these uncluttered fragments of surreal and sparse existence. Even a few posts from an older part of the pier with the island hinted at in the background feels like too much in comparison.

ABSTRACT MIST

This doesn’t take away from the beauty of another island in the same landscape.

GEORGESON ISLAND IN WINTER MIST

Quality Prints available HERE.

Or even adding in a bit of the bay is a pleasant frame as well…

BENNETT BAY GULF ISLAND NATIONAL PARK

Quality Prints available HERE.

Or a few branches framing the farther off Edith Point…

EDITH POINT ENCHANTED

Quality prints available HERE.

I admit some of the qualities of the first image still exist in the photographs that follow it but the spacial void is seriously diluted. Our view is noticeably anchored to the land. But is it a distraction or a necessity?

In this reference of thought I made some assumptions that the first image, which has been holding my attention, would be of no interest to others. This assumption was so compelling that I did not release this image or the next one for purchase. Yet, I personally come back to them again and again. I seem to take one step towards more inclusion and definition in my last three paintings while there is still a sense of keeping the landscape compelling with its simplicity. To explore this tension in the rendering of the paintings further, there are three recent works that I released yesterday over on my website Terrill Welch Artist in the post “Sky and Sea in Three West Coast Contemporary Landscape Paintings”

I feel myself leaning more strongly in my most recent paintings towards daring to hold a sense of completeness with a painting similar to the first photo composition of SERENE SEA. I sometimes wonder if this was a pull that Mark Rothko experienced in his studio when he painted those large patches of colour. Anyway, it probably will amount to nothing on the easel but still I must give its due. I must pause and consider.

Well, my coffee is now cold and the half of a fresh pear I had earlier has long worn off. It is time for a late breakfast and to see what else the day has to offer.

What are you pausing to consider these days?

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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

The Painter’s Horizon Is Seldom Visible

January 20, 2014February 7, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 14 Comments

Most days I have little idea what direction my painting is taking me. I like to think I do. However, it is a myth. What I have are intentions. My intention is to explore how my specific historical experience impacts my work with more conscious awareness.

But right now, I have a long list of tasks that must be accomplished in preparation for three months travel in Europe beginning in April 2014. The round trip tickets are purchased. We are committed. I updated the most urgent items that must be accomplished to a separate list on Sunday morning. Then I set it aside.

You see, a request had come in from a fellow artist and friend for me to donate a postcard size work to Twitter Art Exhibit: Orlando. I usually do donate to this fundraiser and this was just the nudge I needed. The deadline is February 21, 2014 and I need 10 days travel time for the work to arrive in time. If I wanted to work in oil on canvas paper, the work needed to be completed now. Besides, the cause is compelling:

Twitter Art Exhibit: Orlando is an international exhibition of original postcard art benefiting The Center for Contemporary Dance, Special Needs Classes, a nonprofit (501)©3 organization dedicated to dance education and outreach. The Special Needs Classes include customized exercises that expand the student’s range of motion, creativity and social skills. Class work is further designed to enhance skills in memorization, problem solving and communication. Belinda Balleras, whose son takes classes every week, says: “He has a new sense of creative fulfillment and an additional pathway to productively express emotions.”

This is the fourth Twitter Art Exhibition, a concept founded by founder David Sandum, a Swedish-born artist living in Moss Norway, who conceived Twitter Art Exhibit as a vehicle for doing good through social media and online community-building. The idea is simple: artists around the globe receive a call through Twitter social media to create original postcard-sized art, which they mail to a local curator, who then exhibits and sells them to benefit a local charity.

Here is my 4 x 6 inch oil on canvas paper contribution set aside to rest and dry before submitting it to this event.

WALKING AN AUTUMN ROAD

The postcard size works will be sold for $35 a piece and ones that do not sell on the opening night of the event will become available for online purchase. If you want to know more or would like to participate follow the hyperlink above or go HERE.

After this, I picked up my list of urgent tasks…. well, not exactly. What can I say? There was paint on my palette? The sun hadn’t come out? I just couldn’t leave the easel?

Choosing a 12 x 16 inch canvas with a dark purple ground I began to contemplate quiet despair, broken promises and how some moments are too sad for tears. Why this aspect of our human experience had surfaced was a blog post by Deborah Brasket “Some Tragic Falling off” into Difference and Desire. This post and our west coast weather.

A January west coast afternoon.

We haven’t seen much of the sun during the past few weeks. In fact, the fog has been hesitant to raise her skirts much above her knees on the island ridges. We can’t really blame her. After all, we have been gawking without shame, seeking even the tiniest glimpse of blue sky and sunlight between her cottony ruffles. Today though, within the deep winter quiet, we are given brief moments of reprieve from her dowdy grey garments. It was not a dazzling display but enough to leave us momentarily content, hopeful even.

So I set to work. I like to think that I know my approach to a canvas and I am reasonably sure of the outcome. But I mostly just fool myself. My stubborn, overbearing intuition regularly slips the brush and palette knife from between my conscious breath and finds its own way across the canvas.

PROMISE – resting

The painting has a feeling all its own. My husband came in and said softly – oh, it is quiet. Then he smiled, satisfied, content even.

More about this painting and links to purchase information on my website Terrill Welch Artist HERE.

What might represent your idea of “some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light” as in Robert Robert Hass’s poem “Meditation at Lagunitas” posted by Deborah Brasket?

Now, before I dare pick up the brushes, that list. Where did I put that list?

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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

A More Contemplative Year Ahead

January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 15 Comments

My best guess is that I shall paint fewer paintings in 2014 and release more photographs and painting sketches. This will be partly due to three months traveling and living in Europe. We plan to leave sometime near the beginning of April. The tickets will likely be purchased by the end of the week.

The 2013 year was a good solid success for my paintings but I want to go deeper into the learning curve of how my specific historical experience impacts my work. I want to go deeper into how I can paint the spaces in between light and shadow. I want to find ways to bring you, the viewer, farther into my work until you can clearly formulate the poetry of landscape. I want us to know and understand our embeddedness in our natural environment. Human life, as we know it, may depend on strengthening that one relationship. I suspect that my trip to Europe and its museums and countryside combined with my camera and brushes is going to help me find answers to these searches.

Oh, there will always be new work to release in my Artsy Home online gallery, such as the two new paintings entered over the weekend. But I find it is not really important but rather a task similar to organizing the books on the bookshelf for a research project.

What is important then?

There is quote attributed to Buddha that I saw this morning which seems most succinct:

In the end only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

My only commitment today is a long walk. With the heavy rains water is rushing to the sea.

Quite possibly it is a stone in a stream that will hold most of my attention today.

This , and a few of the lines from the Mary Oliver “Morning Poem”

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead –

if it’s all you can do

to keep on trudging –

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted –

reference; p. 106/7 of New And Selected Poems volume one (1992) by Mary Oliver

What are your focus and intentions for the year ahead?

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

Sunrise to Sunset Traveling the British Columbia West Coast Water Highway

January 6, 2014January 24, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 26 Comments

The Government of British Columbia and its fine west coast island citizens are in agreement that something has to change to sustain one of the most beautiful water highway systems in world. There is not agreement on how this system must change however. User fees are going up and usage is going down. With the expected total tariff revenue shortfall of about $40M by the of March 2016, there are proposed service cuts and tweaking of schedules which may save money but will likely not lead to increased traffic. Several factors have led to this grim situation including a lengthy downturn in the economy, fares overreaching the balance point of cost to value in the traveler’s wallet and the government requiring that each route be self-sustaining while separating these ferry served waterways from the highway transportation system and its funding support. It is not a pretty picture. If this situation is not resolved The Local Ferry Committee concludes that “the final result will be the continued strangulation of island and coastal communities, the effects of which are already evident.” (Ferry Facts – MayneLiner Volume 24, Number 1, January 2014)

There seems to be only one way to really give you a good idea what this means and that is to take you with me on a trip from Mill Bay on Vancouver Island to Miners Bay on Mayne Island in January.

The Mill Bay sunrise with Mount Baker in the background is pleasant.

from under the arbutus tree on the Brentwood College campus where I am visiting the “O” family.

Boats rest quietly in the marina next door as another amazing day begins.

I don’t have to leave until midday so we go off for a morning hike returning in time for a quick lunch before I head out. Mayne Island is only about 35 km directly across the water but I will drive an hour over the Malahat highway and up the Saanich Peninsula to the Swartz Bay terminal to catch the 2:15 pm going to Saturna Island and then Mayne Island arriving about 4:10 pm. I allow three and a half hours for travel time. On a day like today this is a pleasure…

Ferry traffic can be spotted regularly as we set out from Swartz Bay.

After passing island after island views, we approach Saturna Island almost an hour later and Mount Baker is still grandstanding on the horizon.

Quality prints available HERE.

The sun is getting low in the sky when our small Mayne Queen ferry retraces its passage back between North Pender Island and Mayne Island.

The Queen of Nanaimo ferry is finding its way from Saltspring Island and Galiano Island gives a looming welcome on the right.

I turn and look back towards Swartz Bay knowing that one of the large ferries taking passengers across the Strait of Georgia will likely be visible.

I wasn’t disappointed.

We dock about five minutes late and I meander home, waving at neighbour and friend Leanne Dyck from The Sweater Curse blog who is out for a walk as I go.

My sweet husband has a few groceries he wants to pick up before we go out for dinner. We unload everything but my camera and head immediately for Miners bay. There is only a slight orange glow left in the sky as we pull up and part on the street facing the Miners Bay Trading Post.

What can I say? It is good to be home. It is good to have ferry service and not have to hitch-hike on a passing tug boat, freighter, sea plane or sail boat. Yet, I wonder if it might come to that again in the maybe not so distant future. If it did, we would remember these days of 3.5 hour assured travel to go a distance of 35 km fondly. But would we move? Would we leave our island home with its water highway for the paved highways of the mainland?

Would you still think about coming to visit me if there was no ferry service?

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

Best 13 Paintings of 2013 Happy New Year

December 31, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 4 Comments

My personal selection of my best 13 paintings in 2013 – Happy New Year!

Terrill Welch

First, Happy New Year and all the best in 2014!

With fifty finished works, many already sold, and several of these paintings three feet by six feet or greater, I found it a challenge to decide on a personal selection of just 13 paintings to designate as my best 13 paintings of 2013. However, the job is done and it gives me great pleasure to share my choices with you on the eve of a New Year.

In no particular order….

STORM WATCHING 30 x 4o inch oil on canvas

THROUGH THE TREES 5 x 7 inch oil on canvas – Updated July, 2014: SOLD

WINTER SEA II 18 x 24 inch oil on canvas – SOLD

END OF DAY WITH ARBUTUS 8 x 10 inch oil on canvas – SOLD

RHYTHM OF THE SEA EDITH POINT 20 x 40 inch oil on canvas

WEST COAST BLUES study 12 x…

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Fourth Year Creative Potager Blog Anniversary

December 30, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 15 Comments

Just three days ago, on December 27th, it was the fourth anniversary of Creative Potager. During this four years, the space has shifted and changed with the patterns and needs of my life. We have shared much haven’t we? Blogging is sometimes a little like a public journal. It captures more than we intend because of the comfortable conversational exchanges. It doesn’t capture all of course. An artist has to have a few secrets. But it does string together my intentions, my focus, the main events and the rhythms of my work. Much has happened in four years and much has remained the same.

I still take you on long walks where the winter afternoon light is fine.

Quality photography prints available HERE.

Places where the Surfbirds entertain with flashes of white above the water.

Mallard ducks can surprise as I climb over large sandstone rocks along the shore.

Quality photography prints available HERE.

Places where trees embrace moments that we may not have noticed otherwise.

Places on a small island off the southwest coast of Canada where the sea is ever-present.

Thank you for walking with me this past four years.

Thank you for joining me in the studio to render these impressions from our walks.

Together, we have mixed paint.

We have brushed it onto canvases and gessobord.

We have pushed it around with a palette knife.

In a effort to render those walks and those moments, where the heart and soul is most alive, I have worked hard both en plein air and in the studio. And you have been the most gracious, supportive and encouraging of company.

Tomorrow, I shall post on the Terrill Welch Artist website my personal selection of the best thirteen of 2013 paintings. There were over fifty finished works to consider so it wasn’t an easy task to choose just thirteen. However, without hesitation I can say it was a good year and a year you were so much a part of making it so.

Thank you! You are one of the finest of Monday morning blessing.

This not the end of course, just a pause for acknowledgment before we proceed into 2014 which is shaping up to be a truly grand adventure. More about this next week.

I have no question today so I ask instead – What question do you most want to answer before the end of 2013?

Please note: The last four photographs were taken by photographer Allison Mullally at a recent studio photography shoot.

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

Storm Watching – large contemporary seascape (terrillwelchartist.com)
Arbutus by the Trail – small contemporary landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
West Coast Island Road in October – contemporary landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
New Release – August Morning Reef Bay landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)

Second to Last and other moments of an artist

December 23, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 17 Comments

Many months ago Kathy over at Lake Superior Spirit blog suggested the idea of a blessing post each week until the end of the year. I liked the idea. I accepted the challenge. This now is my second to last Monday morning blessing post for 2013. It has been a good practice as my blog writing had become very sporadic. The topic also offered a way to focus and organize my thoughts as an artist and as a sole-entrepreneur who regularly shares work-in-progress and other experiences that underpins my creative process. Thank you Kathy 🙂

That said, I have no idea what I should share or leave out this morning as a tree frog croaks in the woods outside the studio and the sun reaches over the hill in its winter golden light. I am reminded of a quick study that isn’t released yet from a few weeks ago from a similar morning.

MORNING GREETS FIR TREE 10 x 8 inch oil on canvas

The paint easily dances with the sunlight of the branches and I know the blessing of nature and my own breath intimately.

Then there is travel and a recent trip to Vancouver British Columbia and time with family. There is me standing on the back edge of an old bathtub and leaning far out the second story window to flip it wide enough to get a clear shot of the city.

VANCOUVER DECEMBER TWILIGHT

Is this nature too, I ask? I suppose, if an anthill or a beaver dam is nature then maybe this is as well. The evening light certainly doesn’t mind treating it as such.

On the way back home, I am drawn to the beach in the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island. I had gone to Victoria to pick up more oil paints and to get a few Golden heavy acrylic paints to see if they would work for our trip to Europe in the spring. What do you think? Will the do?

DECEMBER SEA VANCOUVER ISLAND STUDY 8 x 10 acrylic on canvas board

The trick I believe with a medium is to go with its strength while knowing its limitation – much like anything else in life. These paints and I will be learning their strengths and limitations over the weeks ahead. Imagine the what a blessing early 1900 painters would have thought it was to have more than one kind of paints in tubes to squeeze out and set to work with no collecting of pigment and mixing of paints? We live in luxurious times here on the west coast of Canada, almost embarrassingly so. I resist the guilt of such a blessed and easy existence. I know that it can change, will likely change. My first job is to use my time purposefully and wisely, today.

THE BIG FIR TREE IN SNOW

Best Wishes, happy holidays and Merry Christmas!

What blessings do find the most difficult to recognize?

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

West Coast Island Road in October – contemporary landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Snow on the way for South Coast tomorrow (globalnews.ca)
Vancouver, BC in December (erinhudsonphoto.com)
Farm In Fog – pastoral landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)

A Tall Tale of Autumn painting resting and another Emily Carr story

December 16, 2013December 14, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

With the holiday season upon us, I truly should put the paints away and get cards and presents ready for delivery. But one more I said to self, just one more to make it an even 50 paintings completed this year. That was last Thursday.

There are no work-in-progress images only this one that was taken as the painting came to rest. Forgive me if you have already seen this painting in progress, along with 8, 965 others last time I checked the post on Google plus alone. It has now had two small edits, wee clean-up adjustments and will get its final photograph soon. But it seemed to be asking to be my Monday morning blessings image for mid December 2013 and so here we are.

Why a tall tale of such a simple autumn painting, you might ask? It is because the combination of fog and memory keep it from a cleaner truth. These are my childhood trees – popular trees growing on the riverbank. They are my first subject of paintings. I cannot pick up a brush to render them without being transported back through time with its many stops before these trees. These are trees I met before there was even a field in front of them. These are trees I introduced my first lover and later others. Then much later my now husband. These are trees I walked beside while I carried my babies and then with them while they carried theirs. These are the trees that my mother and father have walked with me since they were younger than I am today. Painting the spaces of light and shadow in between is filled with the residue of many visits. It is a tall tale that gets taller with each telling. All I intended to do was to use up the paint leftover on the palette.

A TALL TALE OF AUTUMN STUART RIVER resting 16 x 12 inch oil on canvas

This time of year is family time and I suppose in my case tree time. Which brings me to another tall tale and that is a strange happening last Friday on December 13th. I happen to notice that the Creative Potager blog views were going a bit crazy. So I looked and it was this post “Emily Carr Mystery Solved” from November 9, 2010 more than THREE years ago! What could it be I wondered? Well after a couple of hours and views were still piling up from Canada I did bit of sleuthing. It was Google.ca who was celebrating the Canadian landscape painter with a doodle on their home page. What you might ask would this have to do with my very old stale dated blog post? It had to do with what came up when a person clicked on that doodle. The image and search results included this blog post right near the top, not at the very top but near enough to entice the curious. So belated 142 happy birthday Emily Carr, another painter of trees.

For those in Vancouver, British Columbia over the holidays an exhibition of more than 40 forest paintings by Emily Carr will open at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Dec. 21, 2013. Emily Carr: Deep Forest will run until March 9, 2014. The show spotlights works created by Carr in the 1930s, most of them depicting scenes within 25 kilometres of her Victoria home. The paintings in the show are almost all drawn from the Vancouver gallery’s permanent collection. The gallery is home to the most significant collection of Carr’s work in the world, comprising 254 paintings, drawings and other works.

So there we have it two tall tales and a blessing of trees all round!

What tree or trees might you offer a blessing on this fine winter Monday?

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

Emily Carr (tweedsmuirlibrary.wordpress.com)
Emily Carr painting sets new record, selling for almost $3.4 million (vancouversun.com)
Seaside Mayne Island – Large Canadian Landscape Oil Painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Chasing October Sun by the Sea – an en plein air oil painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Arbutus on Mt. Park – landscape oil painting (terrillwelchartist.com)

Storm Watching and its progress on a large canvas

December 9, 2013March 21, 2015 / Terrill Welch / 13 Comments

At 10:00 am today the morning light was not strong enough to work without the studio lamp. It is heavily overcast and last I checked there is a wee bit of snow expected. However, I was able to put the finishing brushstrokes on this large 30 x 40 inch oil on canvas painting this morning. It may be weeks before I can get a decent photograph of it so we will take a look now at the shiny-wet resting point of STORM WATCHING.

We may think that this painting began with this quick painting sketch on the canvas.

But we would be wrong. It all started on Friday December 6, 2013 at about this same time of day when the power went out. I was surprised as there was little wind at la casa de inspiracion. But then the email notifications started coming in with Ferry boat cancellation and they were for the Inside Passage which is not common at all. So I knew then that there had to be wind somewhere and took a guess that it was on the east side of the island.

Sure enough it was blowing a bit out there. But this isn’t the spot we need to be. We have to walk out to Campbell Point in the Gulf Island Park Reserve because the waves are break on the rocks in a big way. Let’s go and have a look. Dress warm and still expect to the wind to go right into a person’s bones and starts sawing away with an ice-cube.

Scrambling out onto a rock ledge the wind whips my big lens and me around with the same ferociousness as the sea. But I am determined. I hunker down low and steady myself against the roar. WILD SEAS WITH MOUNT BAKER IN THE DISTANCE

(Detailed view and quality prints available HERE.) There was no chance of using a tripod in these conditions. It was all up to my stabilizers and years of practice of framing and shooting waves. There wasn’t much time because I would get to cold to be able to work the camera and it was no place to be getting stiff and wobbly when I stood back up from where I was crouching. So steady does it. FULL STOP

(Detailed view and quality prints available HERE.) BREAKING OVER TWICE

(Detailed view and quality prints available HERE.) Sunday as in yesterday I pulled out the large canvas and placed it on the easel. I wanted the immediacy of this moment while it was still fresh to me on a cellular level.

The continuous motion of the winds and the sea stir sea-spray high up onto the cliffs above. I want that. I want that feeling of stirring and motion. I decided no underpainting so that spray would have the advantage of the white underneath. I had noticed the spray shadow in one of my reference images and took advantage of this to create additional depth. I worked on getting the painting down with as few brushstrokes as possible.

I want us to be slightly queasy from it as we are swayed in the waters and crash against the rocks within our viewing of this painting.

At the core there is a knowing and a thimble-size of silence which makes it bearable. This too shall pass. This is the stage that the painting rested overnight. This is where I started earlier this morning and finished at the first photograph which will not be its final of course. For this we must wait for better light.

UPDATE OCTOBER 13, 2014: Link to detailed viewing of the completed painting with purchase information and a link a short (less than six minutes) video where I talk about this painting can be found on the Terrill Welch Artist website HERE.

In conclusion, my Monday morning blessing is patience, admiration and determination. If we are willing to try we can most often do more than we believe we can. A large wave from a large canvas as you forge through the week ahead.

What are you determined to accomplish this week even if the winds of doubt are fierce?

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