Mayne Island Summer Group Show part 1

June 27, 2010July 3, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 17 Comments

A bright corner of Mayne Island is going to get even brighter on July 9, 2010 to September 1, 2010 with the opening of the Mayne Island Summer Group Show with work from about a dozen participants. Do you want to come? Yes I know, for some of you it is too far away. But for others it may be down the road or just a ferry ride for a weekend get away.

Most of you know, I live on the wee Mayne Island with about a 1,000 people year round and maybe 3,000 hanging around during the summer. These 23 square kilometers in the Southern Gulf Islands off the west coast of Canada are home to a thriving art, artisan and writing community with its own arts council. The Mayne Island Trincomali Community Arts Council hosts a series of art exhibits at the Mayne Island Reading Room or “the library” throughout the year.

Whether you will be sipping wine and nibbling treats at the opening with us, between 7:00 and 9:00 pm in the heart of Miner’s Bay, on the evening of July 9^th or you must suffice with my blog review, I hope you enjoy the offerings.

Here is a sneak preview…

Author and artisan Leanne Dyck has submitted a natural fiber art hand knit purse appropriately named “Summer Daze” that is begging to be slung over a shoulder and taken to a summer picnic. I laid it gently on this fir bow to photography. It appears to be right at home.

Quasimodo Pottery creates unique, extremely high quality craftsmanship and functional art in its pottery pieces. Here is a group image of pottery from their website.

The Quasimodo casserole dish was featured recently Creative Potager in the post “Quiet Grace.”

Artist and message therapist Shakeira Wynde’s vibrant abstract acrylic painting will fill the exhibit all by itself with its brilliant colours. She graciously allowed me to slip by her home and take this photo for our early viewing.

My oil painting “East Point Cliff” asked me to put her forward for her debut in the Mayne Island Summer Group Show as well.

As you can see, there is a diverse collection of work in the show. We will be back to take another glance behind the Mayne Island Summer Group show curtain next Saturday before the opening the following week.

And here it is, next week already. Please come on over to Mayne Island Summer Group Show part 2

If you are thinking of coming, the Mayne Island B.C. website (which also has a link to the Mayne Island Chamber of Commerce ) can help you with your planning.

Sprout Question: Where are you showing your creative pieces work this summer?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Orange day

June 24, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 29 Comments

The garden is watered. David is making breakfast consisting of plain organic yogurt, local strawberries, blue berries and some lovely grapes and banana. I will add 3 tsp. of hemp seeds to mine. He will add a bit of organic blue agave to his. I expect that my writing will be interrupted to partake in his efforts. But until then, let me tell you about today and how it has become an orange day. You see on Tuesday our friend Laurie received some bad news. She didn’t tell us what it was but she reassured us that no one was hurt. Today she has written a blog post “Ice Water in my Veins” about her situation. After sending along sending calming and resilient energy, I went about my day. What showed up was orange. Not just any orange but a particular orange.

Oh! My breakfast is ready. I shall be back. There! I had a few delicious bites and now I will continue and finish the rest once I get this post up.

First, there were the two underpaintings I did in the afternoon. Here is an example of one.

There is a shadow on this 18X24 inch canvas but I chose to keep and use the photo anyway and I think you will see why shortly.

Then there was a particular calendula in the garden that seemed to be begging and pleading with me to take its photo. We were coming back from a walk at the beach where I found nothing that was particularly inspiring. As we closed the gate, there was the calendula… saying “I’m here! Take a photo of me!” So I did.

By the time I was done processing and editing the images into what was most pleasing to me, I realize it had been an orange day… a particular colour of orange kind of day.

As you can see, the shadows on the underpainting are creating the same gradient in colour as the shadows in the flower. I can tell you that thought of Laurie and “her news” off and on all day. Each time I would focus calming resilient energy her way. We did not speak to each other or exchange emails. There didn’t seem to be a need. She slipped back in yesterday to the “Sitting” post and said she was feeling much better and would post more on her blog today. So whether the orange is related to my focused intention or not I really have no idea… but I am suspicious that it might.

Laurie knows about the properties or meanings associated with colours so she may drop by and tell us what might be associated with this particular orange. We shall just need to wait and see.

Sprout Question: What colour or texture is pulling on your creative strings today?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Sitting

June 22, 2010June 22, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

loft from sitting on meditation cushion

Last night’s a summer solstice labyrinth walk is slipping into the soft dust of yesterday. Today I have a list. It is a long list of tasks that must be accomplished today, this week and next. Some are routine commitments, like typing up the minutes for a meeting. Others are unique and one-time requests, like painting signs for a wedding on recycled wood so that the 120, or so, guests can find their way around a large venue. Nowhere on this list does it say “put brush in hand and do the underpainting for next painting.”

My first response to this creative dilemma was to sleep until twenty-to-eight this morning. Now, my body feels like it has been pretzel-wrapped and would rather break than unfurl. My mind is grumpy. With puffy, blinking eyes I look out the window and see that the sun is already settling on the valley floor. Grudgingly I note “at least there is sun.” Then I remember “oh yeah, I have a blog to write too… and that package needs to be mailed this mornings as well.”

What is a creative woman in service to creativity and its inspired Creative Potager community to do?

# one – get out of bed and gently untangle limbs and brain… at first hobbling and then gathering some form of jerky tempo on a trip to the washroom. Nothing can be formulated until this task is accomplished.

#two – heat teakettle, hand-grind blend of organic coffee and fill stainless steel insulated coffee press as body and brain cells begin to stretch and fall over each other to gain a more positive outlook on the day. In a moment of stubbornness I ignore them.

#three – climb the wood stairs up to the loft with coffee pot and cup. Place both by laptop for later as I glance longingly at the blank canvas on the easel.

#four – return to the top of the stairs and move past its invitation to decline and go over to the other side of the loft where its high ceiling lets light caress the small space.

#five – bow to the cushion on the floor.

#six – SIT

#seven – go back to desk and add “paint underpainting” to list with an asterisk… which denotes a very important “to do”

I am smiling. All my grumpy stubborn resistance has evaporated like morning dew. Now the day can begin. Among other things, I have a painting to paint!

Not everyone has a formal “sitting practice” such as meditation but most us will sit quietly, informally resting, gathering and sorting mentally, physically and spiritually. In these moments of simply being we can gather direction.

Sprout Question: When has simply sitting been your creative response?

p.s. this is not the blog I intended to write this morning but the goddesses of blog writing had their own ideas… what can I say? Have a most wonderful Tuesday:)

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Squishy hug of thanks WORDPRESS

June 18, 2010June 18, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 21 Comments

Thank you WORDPRESS for your user-friendly interchange and freely hosting blogs that can become small virtual communities such as Creative Potager has become. A big squishy, passionate hug is coming your way through cyberspace!

As of this hour today the wordpress Creative Potager blog has met a new milestone. Since its first post, on Dec 27 2009, the Creative Potager blog has published 102 posts and 1,605 comments AND (drum roll please) has had over 12,000 views. I am doing the happy dance (ta, ta, ta) all around the social networks with friends, casual acquaintances and passionate lurkers who are Creative Potager regulars.

Thank you especially to those who regularly respond to the Sprout Question that accompanies each post. Thank you to all of you who comment above and beyond the Sprout Question. Thank you to all readers who lurk in the shadows. Your views are counted. You are part of the Creative Potager community.

My life and creativity is richer because of each and every one of you. Thank you, thank you thank you.

May the sun continue to rise, in all its glory, over our creative inspiration.

I decided we need a little visual toe-tapping to help us celebrate offered up by Andy the Daft Hermit from the Black Bus in the Highlands of Scotland. The music starts about 30 seconds in so wait for it and enjoy Andy’s photography video…

With much humble appreciation.

Terrill:)

Sprout Question: If WORDPRESS is the host and Creative Potager the post, who are you?

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

New Paint Box

June 15, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 27 Comments

View and purchase full resolution image here.

Do you know that excited tingle you get with a new writing pen or journal or new lens for your camera or a new box of paints? Well, I found such newness where it had been all along – in my Paintnet.com program. I did the unthinkable and digitally painted on one of my photographs. Ahhhuhhhh! Yes, I can hear your gasp but it was so much fun… kind of like writing on the dining room wall with coloured felt pens (and much easier to clean up).

I was inspired by the work of Martha Marshall who creates digital art and collage as well as abstract paintings and regular collage… sometimes even using composted papers. Martha is a prolific artist with an outstanding blog “An Artist’s Journal” that captures the essence and strength of her keen eye for design, texture, patterns and composition. I encourage you to drop by for a browse and read.

Sprout Question: What is the latest new tool or technique you have used and who inspired you?

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Searching for lost and soft edges

June 3, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 33 Comments

When we see, we see around corners because of our rapid eye movements, our moving feet and bobbing head… and because we touch things.

Tuesday’s post “Seeing and Creating” talked about how the brain builds a visual field using rapid eye movement to create the image we are seeing. Some of the information that the brain uses to build an image comes from a history of spatial measurements that we have gathered through touch.

Seeing takes more than our eyes. We must learn spatial relationship, specifically our spatial relationship to other objects. We discover how to see where things are through practice using our hands and feet to touch and move around our world. Babies reach for our faces. Children will crawl, climb, run and jump with varying degrees of success as their brains and bodies learn to coordinate the distances of time and space. Our brain gathers and reuses these measurements in combination with information received from our eyes to provide context and relational information about what we are looking at. This complex relationship of gathering and building our visual field happens constantly and rapidly. Most often we are not even aware of the process.

However when we are creating it is helpful to understand and consider this information in our work. Some of our work in building a visual field will happen intuitively. In fact, many situations a lot of our work in building a visual field will happen intuitively. We won’t know why we at first place a certain word in a particular sentence or why we paused the music on that particular note or why we made that particular mark off on the left side of the page or why we decided to include a particular boulder in our photograph. Mostly we just do what we do.

We can strengthen our work by increasing our conscious ability to build a visual field. A current practice of simplifying photographic images through noise reduction and sharpening and taking out what is not adding to the image is one way to play with how the visual field is built in the photograph.

Practices of adding, leaving or taking away in our creativity are not absolute creative positions but a tension we hold during the process of creating. It is in searching for lost and soft edges that I find I can most consciously building a visual field in my photography, painting and writing.

One tool or exercise we can use is to make marks or write words around your desired subject until it “appears” in your work. This helps us discover what clues or cues in the surrounding area are supporting our ability to see. In photography I do this by placing my desired object in various off-centre relationships in the frame. I change the height I take the image or the distance from the subject and so on.

Sprout Question: How do you know when less is no longer more?

Note: Here is a great reference I discovered as part of researching for today’s

The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies by Mark Paterson (2007)

Also here is an online article that is also helpful – Eyes and Hands: The relationship between touch and space http://people.exeter.ac.uk/mwdp201/space.html

A question I can not answer is how people without use of hands or ability to walk develop spatial relationships in building their visual field. Does anyone know the answer or have a resource?

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Seeing and Creating

June 1, 2010February 16, 2019 / Terrill Welch / 22 Comments

“Bee in salal blossom” View and purchase full resolution image here.

Yesterday, I discovered a bookmark in my memory that gave rise to a set of questions, when I came across some notes from May 16, 2007 about building the visual field that I had made in an art class taught by Glenn Howarth. The following questions arise from my musings about these notes and the use digital and photoshop tools to create images.

What is this passion we have for cleansing images of anything less than perfect?

Can it possibly damage our ability to trust our viewer to see?

Let me explain, as best I can, without taking us too far down “the science of seeing” rabbit hole. When we “see,” the brain needs to imagine most of our reality through a system of expectation. This is because the human eye has only a 15 degree visual arc of acuity or sharp high-resolution colour visual field. We commonly believe that we “see” everything as if it were in this a 15 degree visual arc called fovea vision. This is not true. Our human eye must build a visual field using rapid eye movements and short-term memory so the brain can “create” the image we “see.” Most of the rest of our visual field has about 50 percent acuity and 50 percent colour perception with the far reaches of our peripheral vision seeing only movement in black and white.

Photographs like the bumble bee in a sala blossom image above hold more information in acuity than our eye actually can see at one time without using rapid eye movement to create the image for us. You may be able to notice how you look at this image and be able to catch the eye movement between the bee and the blossom both of which are in sharp focus and then notice how you can “see” the whole picture that is in focus.

Rapid eye movement happens very quickly, at about 3 times a second, and is something we are not consciously aware of, so if you don’t notice there is a reasonable explanation.

If you want to know more, I found this youtube video “Human Senses Touch and Vision” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2sWE0qaOjg&feature=related About 3 minutes in they explain and show how our eyes and brain build a visual field.

Because our brain must “create” a sharp, coloured field of vision, it has a selection process for seeing. We fill in blanks and leave out information that history tells our brain is not relevant both consciously AND subconsciously. I am fascinated with the impact this has on our creativity whether it is visual, written or auditory. Here is a series of my quick charcoal sketches from 2007.

wooden forms for making shoes

I did these sketches while purposefully “seeing” using my sight beyond the 15 degree visual arc of acuity by paying attention to what is in my peripheral visual field allowing the hand to record the image with as little as possible interference from my fovea vision.

male nude sitting

This lesson stuck and I continue to create my work while exploring this way of “seeing” or consciously experiencing the world.

reading

It is not too much of a stretch then, to consider that when we create an image that has high-resolution colour and sharp focus over a larger area we are doing the work of the viewer’s brain “to see” or create that image. If we go the next step and take out “irrelevant information” we are also choosing for the viewer’s brain what is important to see. Your created work has become a powerful editing filter for the viewer. To some extent this is what happens anytime we create. The question I pose is more about how much of a filter is too much filtering and can it actually interfering with the viewer’s ability “to see” what we want to express? And can we hold the viewer’s attention when we do the work of the viewer’s brain to build most their visual field when experiencing our work?

Could it be that the gaps in our expression are of as much interest to the viewer as the sharp clarity? Like say this image….

finding the figure quickly

Sprout Question: How does your way of “seeing” impact your creativity?

On Thursday, I am going to explore further how our human visual system must learn to create spatial relationship between objects through touch and memory and what ways this learning may relate to our creativity.

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Winter Sun Oil Painting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Whole Body Creativity

April 27, 2010April 27, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 11 Comments

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot in the sun.”

– Pablo Picasso

What does it mean to use your whole body in your creativity? The answer is likely related to your awareness and ability to converge all the information from your five senses. For example in the image above, I wanted you to hear the waves. I hope just for a moment you can smell the sea and feel the sand under your feet with a soft breeze on your cheek. I want you to experience a moment of play and confidence through the Canada goose strutting in the waves.

What you don’t know is that this goose just chased a sea otter back into the sea. I am not sure what the scrap was about but it was fascinating hear and to watch.

However my photos are poor. I was too far away and I couldn’t get close enough fast enough. Yet, I somehow wanted to catch that excitement and triumph with the goose, and the waves and the sunlight. The goose in the shallow waves is my attempt to turn a yellow spot into the sun.

Sprout Question: Tell me about a yellow spot you have turned into the sun?

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Summer is coming

April 23, 2010April 23, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 23 Comments

Creative Potager’s summer blog schedule begins the first week of May

budding possibilities - wild rose

The first post for Creative Potager was December 27, 2009. I have been posting a blog Monday to Friday, except for power outages caused by windstorms battering our little island in the Pacific Northwest. Including today, there are 83 posts each with their own sprout question. There are 1,165 comments documenting our creative conversations and 8, 596 times you have come to visit. Creative Potager has become an enjoyable habit to wake up to during the week where I say to myself “what shall I post today?” However summer is coming. I yearn to be outside in the garden, tramping the trails and painting on site rather than inside snuggled up to my laptop. Like the summer wild flowers in this post, I bloom best in untamed places.

each day is precious - wild tiger lily

So after giving it some serious thought, I am changing my posting schedule to twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from the beginning of May until the beginning of September. I may on occasion post an additional submission. But these will be bonus or value-added posts rather than an expectation.

petite lady slipper

I am hoping you can live with this change and that we both will benefit from my scrambling around in the valleys and on the hills and down the beaches of Mayne Island and afar. I am hoping that we can still have rich and engaging conversations between posts even during the long days of summer. I am hoping that the sprout questions will be juicy enough to keep us inspired for the in-between times. I am hoping that you will trust that winter will come with its short days and unpredictable weather and we shall again be glad for our Monday to Friday sprout conversations fueled by the fruits of summer experiences.