Canada Geese on family swim day

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 24 Comments

I happened to see a family of Canada Geese going for an early morning dip in Georgia Strait at Georgina Point on Mayne Island… would you like to join them?

Time for our morning swim everyone!

Yes that means you too. Now move along...

Don't worry we will show you how it is done.

There easy does it...

Now stay close.

I am so hungry

Me too!... Tasty little morsels

Keep an eye out for junior.

Well, I think they have it figured out.

Oops! There they go again...If you're not careful you are going to be eagle breakfast!

Everyone look right... that's it, beautiful!

I could hear the goslings’ little peeping voices as they swam along. And the eagle flew off to see if he couldn’t find a salmon for a morning snack but he sure watched closely before giving up on a small goose feed.

Sprout Question: If you were to take your creativity for a swimming lesson where would it be?

Bonus: Hatchlings are covered with yellowish down and their eyes are open. They leave the nest when 1-2 days old, depending on weather, and can walk, swim, feed, and even dive. The mother goose leads the way on the first family swim and the father goose takes up the rear. Young Canada Geese or goslings grow so quickly that they are virtually indistinguishable from adults in only about nine weeks. With a lifespan of up to twenty-five years, the oldest known wild Canada Goose was 30 years 4 months old. They mate for life with very low “divorce rates,” and pairs remain together throughout the year. Geese mate “assortatively,” larger birds choosing larger mates and smaller ones choosing smaller mates; in a given pair, the male is usually larger than the female. References – mostly http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Goose/lifehistory and a few other brief stops on a googling wild goose chase.

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Riot of Colour

May 13, 2010May 17, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

Several times during the past couple of days it seems that chance, good luck or divine intervention has presented the most amazing experiences. One of these was when the sun came through our skylight and touched on a large bouquet of flowers we had on the table in the great room. The Astramaris (or Alstroemeria) were particularly stunning with their various shades and shadows of yellow and orange.

And this is my personal favourite.

View and purchase full resolution image here.

When we pay attention, there are as many moments to experience amazement as there are moments. Attention is about seeing and feeling each object for the first time. This way it is always fresh and new no matter how many times we have encountered it before. Most often we see habitually using shortcuts developed by our great memories. For example, we can walk through our house without paying attention – and trip over something new that has been placed in a room because we “didn’t see it.” We have developed a habitual way of seeing as we walk from room to room. There are many practices for paying attention. I would like to know yours.

Sprout Question: How do you break free of your habitual way of seeing?

P.S. I also had the good fortune to be at Piggott Bay as a sailing ship was taking a tour of Navy Channel – I’m pretty sure I saw a pirate but you may want to have a look for yourself… http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch/art/5171261-1-sailing-ship-navy-channel

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Far Shore oil painting

May 6, 2010December 5, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 24 Comments

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

I worked on this west coast painting much of yesterday afternoon and into the early evening. At one point I move out onto the covered deck because the natural light had faded in my loft studio. I believe it is to the “tweaking” stage or almost or maybe even completely finished. It is resting now and I will begin another while it lingers in the great room as the day’s light passes overhead. I will peer at it every now and then with a critical eye. At a later point I will take another photo for my redbubble account.

As I was working I mused on a couple of ideas. The first is something my son said when we were talking about song writing. He commented on how sometimes it is best to leave a song and start a new one that will be better rather than try to fix one that is not working. I think this is true for most creative work. Our learning is cumulative. With a certain amount of detachment, we take the work as far as we can, then release it and start again. Drawings in sand, ice sculptures and cake decorating come to mind as ways we can make marks and practice creative detachment.

Speaking of making marks, this is something humans have been doing for a long time. These markings are telling not only of our present but of our past and our imagined future. There is a collective bandwidth of creativity with most creative work gathered around the centre and much less work being created along the margins or fringes. The great work of the fringes will sometimes move to the centre of the bandwidth and new work will develop along the margins. William Blake , Claude Monet, Walt Whitman come to mind as well-known artist who worked in the margins of their time and yet held our attention until their work became accepted and even revered, at which point their creative views and style moved into the centre of the creative bandwidth. This process of margin to centre has always fascinated me because some work just falls off the margins and disappears while other creative work is shuffled into the centre. Most of us work comfortably in the full rich stream of the centre. Only some of us are compelled to work in the margins. Work in the margins is often recognizable by the name calling – bad art, lacking technique, improper, breaking the rules and shocking.

Sprout Question: Where would you place your work on the current bandwidth of creativity?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Slippers and Chocolate

April 29, 2010April 29, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 16 Comments

Last evening we were at the water watching a sea otter diving and catching fish for dinner and listening to the party rattle of a Belted Kingfisher. We were enjoying the clear sky and warm glow before the sun set when a commotion broke out. A raspy voice clattered up from the forest floor shouting with the stage presence of a news orator…

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer day:

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

And took them quite away!

The Queen of Hearts, shouted “Give me back those tarts”

Scaring the two of hearts,

Who changed into a pair of lady’s slippers

the two of hearts - lady's slippers

The Knave of Hearts

Didn’t have his clipper

And even after several false starts

he couldn’t save the lady’s slipper

the lady's slipper

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Farther on he dropped the tarts

Crying “Chocolate Lily!”

Chocolate Lily Fritillaria affinis

The Queen of hearts

Told him not to be so silly

My thanks to Lewis Carroll for the inspiration from The Knave of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Chocolate Lily or Checkered Lily

View and purchase full resolution image here.

Sprout Question: When was the last time you were creatively silly?

Note: Tomorrow I am traveling. The Creative Potager Friday post is scheduled to be put up. However, you will not receive a notice on facebook or twitter until later in the day. So please drop by at your usual time or subscribe to be notified by email.

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

A BLOGGER’S HAIKU

April 28, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 30 Comments

A BLOGGER’S HAIKU

fragrance of lilacs

spring leaves, mauve buds, open, still closed

readers have waited

by Terrill Welch

I recently purchased haiku mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart (2008) by Patricia Donegan. The book is beautifully structured, presenting the poem and a piece of prose about her experience of the poem and a biographical paragraph about the haiku author. Donegan’s book and the lilacs I picked last night were my inspiration for today’s photograph and poem.

Sprout Question: When is your inspiration – just in time?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Sacred Breath of Editing

April 26, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

motor block reclaimed by sea

I question the concept of relying on divine intervention to complete a finished work. I have heard many times from writers, painters, photographers, musicians and gardeners that their creative muse works through them and it is not them creating. It is the divine, the muse, their sacred self. However, I believe it is a mistake for us to stop there. Allow me to explain beginning with this quote:

“When you breathe in, breathe in the whole universe. When you breathe out, breathe out the whole universe.” – Koryu Osaka

I admit to slicing through ego thinking and allowing intuition, my muse, the divine to “have its way” with the page, the brush, the lens of my work. It is this first blush of inspiration, of whole body mind and seeing that comes from a still point where we connect with all that is… seeing, hearing and being as if for the first time. However, that is not the end point. As John Daido Loori, author of The Zen of Creativity, confides, we must continue our journey straight ahead from the mystical peak “down the other side of the mountain, back into the world. It is in the ordinariness of our lives that this intimate experience of the self merging with the absolute can begin to express itself.”

view from the top

This is why we need to learn the sacred breath of editing. Creative work is rarely ever completed in a single session or in the first instance it comes to us or is given to us. We receive or are inspired by the essence of what must be expressed. Now we must also complete the work. We must edit, taking away the extra, closing in on the core essence of what we intend to convey. The sacred breath of editing is the breath that allows us to reconnect with the resonance present when we first created the work. Then we remove what is not absolutely necessary. If we lose the resonance we know we have gone too far.

all that is - reclaimed

So just as your muse, the divine, your sacred self has a role to play in your creativity so does your critical mind applied to the sacred breath of editing. To bring your gift of creativity into its fullness requires a critical viewing, a reviewing and shaping. We must bring our whole self to our work. Trust your critical mind and strengthen its ability just as you have learned to listen to your muse. Yet remember not to invite your critical mind too soon. Savour and complete that first blush of creativity without review, editing or engaging in critical thinking. Allow the work to rest then breathe it in again and begin editing. Ruthlessly edit – with purpose, care, passion and regard for the essence which inspired you in that first instance.

Sprout Question: What might your sacred breath of editing sound like?

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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.

drops of rain on white fawn lilies

Please let me know what YOU are hoping and what you think of this change – because most of the fun of this blog is my conversations with you!

Sprout Question: Does your creativity have a summer schedule?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

A Study

April 21, 2010April 23, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 13 Comments

After yesterdays eclectic group of photos, today is a sparse offering.

These lovely little canvas prints from my East Point Images I shared with you in February the “Simplicity” post. They arrived in yesterday’s mail. I am starting to gather together material for my September solo exhibit and these are going on a particular spot above the books in the library which is hard show.

Like many people I feel physically, emotionally and spiritually naked when I bring my work into the public. This is particularly so do a reading from my writing such as on this coming Saturday or when I have my canvases on the wall in such as the September show. Yet, I have learned that it is a part of “the business of creativity” which must be navigated. So vulnerable or not, the show will go on…

Sprout Question: How do you prepare for a public viewing or listening of your work?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

The ART of Home

April 19, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 23 Comments

Early this morning sitting on the sheepskin in our window seat, looking out at nothing in particular, I think “I have nothing planned for my post today.”

I observe the lived-in comforts of “home” in la casa de inspiracion musing over possibilities.

Then I remember a stunning book in my bookshelf by Lloyd Kahn, Builders of the Pacific Coast published in 2008.

Here are a few pages to inspire you to think about “the ART of Home.”

work of Michael McNamara

work of Jan Jensen

There are 250 pages of stories and photographs of some of the most stunning aesthetically warm, natural or salvaged material homes I have ever had the pleasure to become acquainted. The morning slips away as I browse through the pages…

With only a little effort I find Lloyd’s Blog with a list of a few more of his books as well as an interesting article on the future of publishing.

Sprout Question: Is there a connection between your home and your creativity?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

More than Chocolate Covered Strawberries

April 16, 2010April 16, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 29 Comments

I have for you some chocolate covered strawberries.

View and purchase full resolution image here.

While you are making a choice on which one you will munch, before passing the plate along, let me show you the tulip I found in my garden yesterday.

View and purchase full resolution image here.

Between showers I grabbed my garden gloves.

Put on my hiking boots and began turning the sod.

While I was working the soil I thought about spring. I thought about summer and I thought about the business of creativity. You see, I have accepted a first right of refusal for the oil painting “East Point Cliffs.” My first participation in the BC Ferries showcase has netted a sale for a canvas print of “witness.” I have 100 beautiful cards ready in little envelopes for the farmers market this summer and more canvas photo prints arriving any day. Then there is the deciding of how many books to bring for the book reading of Leading Raspberry Jam Visions and Mona’s Work with Mayne Island writers at the Overleaf in Victoria Saturday April 24^th. Plus, my solo art show “Sea, Land and Time” with the local Arts Council is confirmed for “September 2nd to 22^nd. Is it any wonder I am turning over the business of creativity as methodically as each shovel of sod?

I am sure glad you enjoyed those strawberries.

Sprout Question: What does the business of your creativity taste like?

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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