Painting

A Long Land and Sea Story Painting

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Sunday, 18 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

December 31, 2024

I finished the larger “A Long Land and Sea Story” 40 x 30 inch acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood painting two days ago. I have left it resting to ensure I am finished with it for now. I believe it is complete but as always reserve the right to go back to it at a later date. 

The title of this artwork changed along with the impact of its final rendering when the above ground became more figurative in approach while the below ground remained more abstract and flat. The more I worked on the painting, the more powerful the land and sea history became. My original working title “Bennett Bay Middens” somehow became meaningless in relation to the longer story being told. The change from the proposed abstract and figurative elements was more evolving and embedded in my making process. It is an untended surprise from engaging with materials, memory and imagination that feels and seems just right to convey a slice through time.

“A Long Land and Sea Story” by Terrill Welch, 40 x 30 inch acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood.
Completed December 29, 2024


Artist notes: Revealed is a vertical slice of earth exposed through erosion in such a way that the most of the surface of the painting has a narrow depth of field, holding space and time in the shapes of the shells and then releasing the viewer into an empty sky. For this work, flat colour is used for the aspects below ground combined that is broken by the symbolic red line and broken china with a more representational illusion of a three dimensional view above ground. The painting contains the notion of a slice of earth exposing the passage of time. I am using the red line to represent climate impacts. Broken china is used to symbolize colonialism. The final colour of sky to represent space and mood. I am asking myself – what does it mean for a white woman of European settler culture in 2024 to paint the eroding Indigenous middens from 4,000 or more years ago on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People in Canada?


It seems fitting that this is the final painting I complete in 2024 and it will also be the first painting released in 2025. I need a long story such as this right now, one that can take me past the present short days of grey skies and cold damp west coast winter drizzle.


It is easier to comprehend the size of this work if I share it in a digital room view.


I feel the weight of these coming January and early February days. I shall walk the shore of Reef Bay, paint in the studio and read about material methods, research and thinking about things in the book by Sophie Woodward. It is just six short weeks until the days are much longer and the island’s early spring begins to creep to the surface. I have a lot I want and need to do during this time. The annual deep quiet of our island during these weeks and the isolation will assist me with these tasks.  


Research into Middens and Materials For Paintings

December 6, 2024

Painting from photo references and imagination with tiles screws and broken bone china at the top attached with Golden Soft Acrylic Gel Medium (archival and stays flexible) and walnut oil paint over primed cradled wood surface.

Research about another artist who broke bone china – Dana Claxton 1997 Buffalo Bone China https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china

The middens remind us that the forest can be enhanced where people live or rather lived.

‘Intertidal Resource Use Over Millennia Enhances Forest Productivity’ excerpt: Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia’s coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is particularly the case over the last 6,000 years when intensified intertidal shellfish usage resulted in the accumulation of substantial shell middens. We show that soils at habitation sites are higher in calcium and phosphorous. Both of these are limiting factors in coastal temperate rainforests. Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) trees growing on the middens were found to be taller, have higher wood calcium, greater radial growth and exhibit less top die-back. Coastal British Columbia is the first known example of long-term intertidal resource use enhancing forest productivity and we expect this pattern to occur at archaeological sites along coastlines globally. 

Reference: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307529251_Intertidal_resource_use_over_millennia_enhances_forest_productivity

Soft Acrylic Gel Medium 

Soft Gel Gloss can be used as a glue substitute for collage effects.

Use instructions: The acrylic medium that can also be used to great effect for collage techniques is “Golden – Soft Gel Gloss”. Instead of diluting it with water you use it neat, straight from the tub. This will be perfect to seal the pictures as well, it really is a magic medium! Either paint both sides of the image you want to collage with the medium and attach to the surface you’re working on or cover the surface with a coat of medium, stick your image on, wait for it to dry and then cover with another layer of medium to seal it.

I gathered this research about middens and materials when I did the small study in March 2024. This exploration of the Middens seems important to my sea floor series even if a I consider it slightly on the periphery of the tentative main body work. There is an aspect of a historic more mutually beneficial relationship of humans with the land that I sense can provide guidance to my work and current and future viewers who engage with this work. I think of it as a reflection point or something to consider in our acts of daily doing and being.

Reference list:

Claxton, D. (1997 [-2018]) Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton. Available at: https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 6 December 2024).

Trant, A.J. et al. (2016) ‘Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity’, Nature Communications, 7(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12491.

Seafloor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch

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Saturday, 17 October 2026

Much of this early research was set aside but some strands were pulled through to the end so I want to keep it here for future reference.

Monday, 30 December 2024

Full text and reference list for: Seafloor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch

Welcome! I am Terrill Welch. 

In my Sea Floor painting series, I will practice the Zen theory of seeing with the whole body and mind and moving through this awareness to be able to function in the ordinariness of our lives as discussed by John Daido Loori in 2004.

I also consider that art theory, as described by Cynthia Freeland, “involves the effort to organize a dizzying variety of phenomena so as to try to say what they have in common that makes them special.”  (Freeland, 2003)

In addition, in the words of bell hooks “… I find writing – theoretical talk – to be most meaningful that which invites readers to engage in critical reflection and to engage in the practice…” in her case “of feminism.” (hooks, 1991, p. 8) 

Though hooks is talking about writing and readers, I suggest that the same principle can apply to art theory being most meaningful when viewers are invited to engage in critical reflection and to engage in/with the practice of making art. 

I propose that art theory is embedded in our making practice and lived experiences where one continuously revises and informs the other. 

The purpose of my Seafloor series is to engage in an intimate conversation between land and sea and the art of painting with the intent that development and completion of a work will instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience. However, this is not an isolated new beginning.

As a white, rural, post secondary educated mid sixties woman of settler ancestry living on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People along the southwest coast of Canada, I was born after the 1940’s and 50’s American Abstract Expressionism movement which included the likes of Mark Rothko and before the gestural figurative and gauging work of Canadian painter Patterson Ewen in the 60’s and 80’s, which has then led me to the thrill of performance art such as the significant contemporary work of Joan Jonas and Dana Claxton and their powerful installation art. Through all of this, I have remained a practicing painter for the past 50 years with primarily figurative, semi-figurative, semi-abstract and impressionist leanings.

I can and do experiment with painting fully abstractly. However, the process and the results seem incomplete to me for the conversations I wish to have with my subjects in paint. Both figurative and abstract elements in my paintings are imperative to the depth, movement and full expression I want to create in my work. 

With this context in mind, I propose that positioning figurative versus abstract in contemporary art is possibly a false dichotomy. I suggest that in my painting practice for this series, figurative and abstract painting are on the same continuum and have an elastic tension between whole body and mind awareness and the functionality required within our ordinary lives. 

This both/and approach to figurative/abstract painting has strong historical beginnings with French painter Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) through to American painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993) and Canadian painter Patterson Ewen (1925 – 2002) to those referenced in 2021 by Julian Delarange in contemporary art such as David Hockney (1937 -) , Gerhard Richter (1932 – ), Alex Katz (1927 – ) and the youngest at 65 years old, Peter Doig (1959 -).

In 2023, Camille Cohen continues to explore why figurative art has maintained its relevance through time citing the iconic work of Frida Kalho (1907 – 1954) and the figurative abstractions of Cecily Brown (1969 – ). (Cohen, 2023)

However, there are risks within this making approach. As Loori cautions, once we name something, by giving it figurative meaning, we risk no longer noticing how what we have named is perpetually changing. (p. 73 Loori, 2004) We risk missing what else our subject is and what it might yet become. 

I address this risk by beginning again and again, breath by breath, brushstroke by brushstroke through to the quivering notion of naming before it is named – leaving room in each painting for future possibilities and discoveries. 

Video publicly available to view on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LOOo6ipMBcg?si=koFBO4x6UMfu9MfH


Reference list

Claxton, D. (1997) Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton. Available at: https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 6 December 2024).

Cohen, C. (2023) What is Figurative Art ? A comprehensive guide, COHLE GALLERY. Available at: https://www.cohlegallery.com/blogs/stories/what-is-figurative-art (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Delagrange, J. (2021) Contemporary Figurative Painting: A Complete Overview – CAI, Contemporary Art Issue. Available at: https://www.contemporaryartissue.com/contemporary-figurative-painting-a-complete-overview-and-list/ (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Diebenkorn, R. (1957) Sea Wall [Oil on Canvas]. Available at: https://diebenkorn.org/objects/220/?group=52ae518792775b11d5b4a4cddb7f6f80 (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Drouin-Brisebois, J. and Diviney, D. (2024) JOAN JONAS: WE COME FROM THE SEA, Gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Available at: https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/your-collection/joan-jonas-we-come-from-the-sea (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Ewen, P. (1983) Ice Floes at Resolute Bay [acrylic on gouged plywood].

Freeland, C. (2003) Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192804631.001.0001.

Griffin, K. (2018) ART SEEN: Only British bone china allowed for Buffalo Bone China, vancouversun. Vancouver Sun. Available at: https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/art-seen-only-british-bone-china-allowed-for-buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 21 December 2024).

Hatch, J.G. (2018) Paterson Ewen: Life & Work, Art Canada Institute – Institut de l’art canadien. Available at: https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/paterson-ewen/biography/ (Accessed: 13 November 2024).

hooks, bell (1991) Theory as Liberatory Practice bell hooks. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 2., pp. 1–12. Available at: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Crisis-and-Critique-2018-19/hooks_theory.pdf.

Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5367 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Jonas, J. (2023) Joan Jonas in ‘Fiction’ – Season 7 – ‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ | Art21, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/x2WkckhWRxw?si=NhphxzLbyAm498tq (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Loori, John Daido (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Lynk, M. (2024) ‘We come from the sea’: American artist Joan Jonas on the pull of oceans and Cape Breton, CBC. Ideas in the Afternoon, Radio One. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artist-joan-jonas-cape-breton-and-oceans-1.7358491 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Meiers, A. (2020) How the Rothko Chapel Creates Spiritual Space, JSTOR Daily. Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-rothko-chapel-creates-spiritual-space/ (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

Trant, A.J. et al. (2016) ‘Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity’, Nature Communications, 7(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12491.

Welch, T. (2022a) Future Fragments Study [acrylic and oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/future-fragments-study (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2022b) Sandstone Serpents at the Entrance of Active Pass [acrylic and pencil crayon on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sandstone-serpents-at-the-entrance-of-active-pass (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024a) A Long Land and Sea Story [acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood].

Welch, T. (2024b) Drifting with Seashells in a Receding Tide [digital sketch using Art Set App].

Welch, T. (2024c) Late August Morning [oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/late-august-morning (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024d) Rhythms on the Sea Floor with Crab [acrylic on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/rhythms-on-the-sea-floor-with-crab (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024e) Sea and Seals [oil, ceramic tiles, screws and wire on wood]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sea-and-seals (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024f) Sea Floor at Reef Bay [walnut oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sea-floor-at-reef-bay (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024g) Sea Floor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/LOOo6ipMBcg?si=6a_eNxmBZWSAjdKi (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024h) Shells Gathering Study [walnut oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/shells-gathering-study (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024i) Strait of Georgia Blues [walnut oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/strait-of-georgia-blues (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024j) Varnish Clamshell in the Flow [walnut oil on linen]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/varnish-clamshell-in-the-flow (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Rough capture of research considerations

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

I am beginning to muse about research considerations.

Do I restrict geographic site or sites for my field work?

Are there other materials and ways of engagement other than paint and a surface that are compelling to me when having a conversation with nature?

How does being with nature, specifically the sea instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience.

What marks or rhythms of marks and shapes on a painting surface convey inner peace, wellbeing and resilience?

Action: Must investigate theories and research – My biases are that these aspects of self engagement, realizations or vibration achieved by both the maker of the work and the viewer of the same work allows for the best opportunity for living a full, rich life with compassion, accountability,  and endurance. I question whether this is true or simply long held assumptions.

Now to get on with some painting in the studio. It is only 9:30 and I should be able to get a couple of hours in at least. Then we have the “Making Day” tomorrow for school. This should make for a nice warm up for then.

Latest small work of a varnish clamshell in a seasonal stream at the tide line

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

The making process begins with a few paint marks in walnut oils on an 8 x 10 inch linen on board surface with a solid oil red ground. I wanted the solid foundation this deep red will offer to the much lighter overpainting.

I have a short video from my field work and reference gathering that I play several times as I work. It is the shapes and movement balanced by the flashes of light sparkling in the water that most interesting me. I reach down into the soft ripples of water caressing the clamshell and set down the broadest of brush marks onto the surface.

My intention for this work is to instil a sense of inner peace, resilience and wellbeing. The work is a reminder of who I am after a stressful and tumultuous couple of weeks. I need this making process almost as much as I need to breathe. I can feel myself centre and my shoulders relax as I work.

I now sit writing these notes as the December afternoon low sun streams into the studio and across the kitchen beside where I am sitting. The house is quiet. A soft breeze moves the branches gently on the large for trees outside the window. I am grateful for this rural bounty. I am grateful for life. I am grateful for the technology that allows me to capture bits of my world and the tools to create passages of conversation with our surrounding environment, particularly the sea, the Salish Sea if I want to be more specific. Even when I cannot physically get there, the sea remains close to me as the tides move back and forth against the edges of my memory. The small work now rests in front of the larger painting I will continue working on before daylight tomorrow.


“Varnish Clamshell in the Flow” by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch walnut oil on linen board. Completed December 10, 2024


Artist notes: I had gone to Bennett Bay and along the beach to where a season creek was flowing into the sea and washing over seashells along the way. They varnish clamshells created a light musical sound as the water passed over them. The beauty of the shapes and sounds created a textured resonance in my being. For those moments inner peace is held, in those shapes, in those colours and sounds. I find inner peace in the abstracted loosen of the brushstrokes, gifted to the linen surface without misgivings or hesitation. This is the full body experience I aim to capture in this small painting completed in oil, wet-in-wet, in the studio a month later. 

It feels good to be back working in my physical studio again!

Working in the Unknown at the Edge of Knowing

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Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

This post combines three separate original entries into this one post. I rarely use digital painting tools but they came in handy when I had to be away from my art studio for an unknown amount of time.

Exploring the Work of Artist Joan Jonas: ‘We come from the sea’ 

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Yesterday, I was going on my daily 4 km circuit walk around our neighbourhood crescent that we have imagined for ourselves as a practical, low maintenance and enjoyable treadmill. Sometimes, I just walk up the hill on Bowsprite Crescent, along Wood Dale Drive down the other side of Bowsprite Crescent and back to where I started and then around again, six times. Other times while I walk, I listen to music or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national public radio. 

On Monday, 18 November 2024, I decided to listen to CBC Radio One live with Nahlah Ayed and ‘Ideas in the Afternoon’. Ayed was presenting an interview by Mary Lynk with American artist Joan Jonas that was first published on CBC 22 October 2024. The interview had been done in July of this year and Joan Jonas is vibrant, engaging and 88 years old. I was still listening when I had finished my walk. When I came back into the house, I quickly wrote down the information to be able to find the podcast later.  

Today, I listened to the interview again. What has deeply intrigued me is Jonas’ remarks about the our human relationship to the sea:

‘We come from the sea. We don’t think about it very often, but our semicircular canals are similar to those of the fish. Our eyes are similar. We have backbones and the fish grew little legs and came out of the sea and then developed into what we are today,’ she explained (Lynk, 2024).

‘There are different theories about how that happened. My idea is that we have a memory of that somewhere in our unconscious. We remember that we come from the sea. It’s not a memory. It’s a feeling. It’s in our DNA. I think that’s where all these stories come from and our desire to go back to the sea, our desire to swim underwater’(Lynk, 2024).

However, it is most powerful to hear Jonas read her words at 6:30 on the 53:59 podcast. There is power and conviction in her voice as if she is lifting her words up over the sounds of waves. 

I find myself searching further into Jonas’ work in video and performance art. Her works are like having a conversation in the language of my inner most private self. Jonas uses memory, imagining, dream, her voice, her body and video together and exquisitely mapped out in layers within physical space using mirrors, installations, collaborations with musicians, performers, herself and the act of drawing or painting. These aspects are all present at once in a fractured whole of space and time which includes a viewer, possibly any viewer or at least no perfectly contextualised viewer. 

There is something important for me here. I have yet to grasp what exactly. I know it might have to do with my observation and reference gathering practice. I am fascinated by how Jonas makes her process visible and part of what she presents in conversation with herself and others. There are fragments of continuation in her multimedia pieces that paint alone on a surface has difficulty communicating by itself. Has Jonas offered a way to see the length of my art practice as my art rather than just what is left behind with my body and mind on a painted surface? I am not sure but I want to ponder the possibility. 

I place this note here in my journal so it can be mused upon during the weeks, months and years ahead.

References:

Lynk, M. (2024) ‘We come from the sea’: American artist Joan Jonas on the pull of oceans and Cape Breton, CBC. Ideas in the Afternoon, Radio One. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artist-joan-jonas-cape-breton-and-oceans-1.7358491 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5367 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Jonas, J. (2023) Joan Jonas in ‘Fiction’ – Season 7 – ‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ | Art21, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/x2WkckhWRxw?si=NhphxzLbyAm498tq (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Working in the Unknown at the Edge of Knowing

Tuesday, 26 November 2024

In again watching Dr. Michele Whiting’s video lecture “Meaning Making/Making Meaning”, I am reminded of the power of full body memory. I am reminded about how much information is gathered that is not necessarily at first accessible through immediate recall of images or words but rather through sensations that were so very necessary before we developed a human capacity for language and naming – possibly the world of an infant or early humans. I sense that we do not lose these capacities but rather that they are often embedded beneath our quick short-hand ability to classify and organize information into meaning through naming and language of what we see and experience. 

This brings me to the question of representation in art making, as distinct from visual imitation in art making. This has been a vexing problem for me and it is one I come back to again and again in my practice. Painting an ocean in my practice has less to do with the visual curve of a wave and much more to do with smell of the sea and the feel and temperature of the air and the impermanence of natural light and the specific sounds of water and shore birds – yet, in the end, there is often a wave and a horizon line that orients the viewer inside of the seascape to feel as much as observe this full body and sensory moment. I will not fully unpack this tension right at the moment but rather put the problem here as a placeholder to come back to again later. 

Next, let’s have a look at the progress I made last week on the 40 x 30 inch acrylic, oil and broken china on wood with the working title “Middens in Bennett Bay.” 

I worked upside down to layout and attach the broken china.


Before doing this, I had developed the composition first with a few lines in pencil and then blocked in the underpainting with acrylic.


As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have chosen a composition that is a vertical slice of earth revealed through erosion in such a way that the most of the surface has a narrow depth of field, holding space and time in the shapes of the shells and then releasing the viewer into an empty sky. For this work, flat colour is being considered for the aspects above ground combined with a more representational illusion of a three dimensional view below ground that is broken by the symbolic red line and broken china. This is then contained within the notion of a slice of earth exposing the passage of time. I am using the red line to represent climate impacts. Broken china is used to symbolize colonialism. The final colour of sky to represent space and mood. I am asking myself – what does it mean as a white woman of European settler culture in 2024 painting the eroding Indigenous middens from 4,000 or more years ago on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People? Who is my intended audience?



Here is a close up of the bits of broken china before I attached it with heavy body acrylic medium to the red acrylic painted wood surface.


Next is to continue the over painting with oil paints.The overpainting, except for the red line, will not be so bright but I am not sure what shades of grey, green and muted purples it will be yet. We shall see once I start working.

I also want to record that my physical situation has taken an unexpected turn following what should have been a short break on Saturday to attend my son’s wedding in Vancouver. Upon my return Sunday evening, as I pulled into the driveway, my husband fell getting up out of his chair when he stood to greet me and broke his hip. After an ambulance arrived and paramedics assessed the situation, a water taxi ambulance was ordered to get him and me off the island to the Victoria General hospital. Following a night in an overcrowded emergency ward, he has now had x-rays and CT scan and was moved to a hospital room in a unit while he waits for possible surgery. 

After a full night’s sleep, I now think I have a plan to be able to continue my schooling, possibly by using a digital drawing and painting app called “Art Set” part of the time that will allow me to work from a raw start digitally as if I were using physical tools but in a digital format. Here is an example of such work from about a year ago.



I have little experience with this app which in a way might be useful, if one wants to work in the unknown at the edge of knowing as discussed in Dr. Michele Whiting’s video lecture. 

I may possibly miss this week’s class on Thursday, November 28th, however, I am confident that after that I will have it sorted, though it is likely to be a challenging six months ahead until my husband heals and becomes more independent again.

DRIFTING WITH AN EBBING TIDE

Tuesday, 3 December 2024

I am still in flux drifting from place to place since Saturday, November 23, 2024 when I went to my son’s wedding gathering in Vancouver, British Columbia. Upon my return Sunday evening I came through the door to my husband laying on the floor with a broken hip that required an ambulance, a water taxi ambulance to get to the larger Vancouver Island in the dark, rain and rough water where we transferred to another ambulance and eventually made it to the emergency room forty minutes later. By this time it’s after 11:00 pm. Around 2:00 am X-rays confirmed the break and I  reached a hotel room, showered and went to bed at 3:00 am. I stayed there for a second night and then moved to stay with family for a few days before moving to stay with other family members for the duration of David’s hospital stay in Victoria, British Columbia. Surgery has been successful, rehabilitation is underway and his release and home are a matter of days away rather than weeks. 

In all of this, I did miss one live online class. However, my focus has remained strong and connected to my art practice and studies. I am more emotionally exhausted than physically tired. Plans are in place to be back on Mayne Island for my call early on Thursday morning. From there, everything should become more steady. 

In the meantime, in addition to my regular daily walks in nature over the past week, I did a digital sketch today just to remind me of the sea and shore. 

“Drifting with Seashells in a Receding Tide” by Terrill Welch, digital sketch using Art Set App. December 3, 2024.


Artist notes: Seashells crouch in a soup of life with a receding tide. I breathe in and let out a ragged exhale. I am remembering this moment for comfort and strength. I am remembering to gain inner peace and access reserve strength. I can do this, I tell myself. I can do this.

There is no separating life from my art practice. One aspect has always influenced and impacted the other in unexpected ways. Together they provide me with a sense of wholeness. I do not know yet how these latest events will change both my life and art. I just know that they will.

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. 

Arbutus in August Painting Data Collection

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

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

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

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.