Lady Arbutus Painting Data Collection

August 10, 2026September 7, 2026 / 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.

The Everyday Beauty of Art: Reflections on ‘Lady Arbutus’

August 3, 2026 / Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Monday, 3 August 2026

I am standing at the easel this morning and decided I would write while taking a teabreak. The painting catches the glare from the late morning sun outside the art studio window. I leave it and the brushes where they were put down and glance at the finished painting with almost dry edges that I thankfully had remembered to cover before I started.

An early August morning in the art studio of Terrill Welch with work-in-progress.

A rough sketch had been completed yesterday and set up on my old French Box easel so that I could settle right into painting this morning.

A rough sketch by Terrill Welch, on a 14 x 11 inch linen covered birch board surface, is set on a French Box easel with the palette below Sunday evening in preparation for the next morning’s painting session.

Collection of reference images between 30 August 2023 and 20 August 2025 by Terrill Welch in preparation for painting “Lady Arbutus” in August 2026.

While I am painting, I do not think of much but rather focus on what I am remembering and feeling about this specific tree and this specific place which is no longer publicly accessible since much of the land around it was purchased as part of a conservation land use agreement. I cherish and I am deeply grateful for the vision of the landowners and those that worked to acquire the lands for this reason. It is a small price to pay to respect the request to stay off of the very point of Edith Point that is still held as private land. This aside, I lean into my memories again.

work-in-progress on the easel of “Lady Arbutus” by Terrill Welch, 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch board.

There is a ferry whistle in Active Pass on the other side of the island that echoes a response to the August sun pressing towards it through the trees. A calm ocean behind me pools in the bottom left of the painting. It isn’t there in the reference. This won’t matter and it might not even stay to the finish line. For now it needs to be there. Deep shadows offer a counterbalance to the bright trunks of the arbutus trees and rich soft greens of stunted poplar trees in the grove. What would it like to be this arbutus tree tuck in next to a few strong firs next to the Salish Sea? Answering this question is a significant part of the job of this painting. Though it may indeed capture a beautiful moment, that is not its purpose. It is a working painting and will bring a sense of being close to home and all that this means. This is true for most of my paintings. They are not collected as decorative objects or for status or for their uniqueness but rather for good company!

This brings me to a book I am reading and a question. Can paintings have an everyday use, like a hand turned pottery mug or a hand knit sweater? The Japanese philosopher, art historian, aesthete and poet, Soetsu Yanagi (1889 – 1961), proposes that true beauty does not come from straining to be remarkable. It comes from a kind of forgetting. Mingei or “crafts of the people”, is used to describe an approach and an object that “must be wholesomely and honestly made for practical use” (Yanagi, 2019, p. 5). These objects have been made without a need to be special or important and without grasping for attention. Further, the objects grow in beauty by their daily use. They are objects that have been made well and keep us company as we move through our ordinary lives. Yanagi in his book The Beauty of Everyday Things is speaking about anonymous folk craft and something that is different from what we understand as aristocratic contemporary fine art. However, I want to consider how my paintings might be and most often are acquired for their use value — not for decoration, not for spectacle or status but rather for daily company. This daily company is of course the underlying practice in which my brush touched the canvas in the first place. The paintings are the result of my conversation with nature that then invites the viewer into these exchanges. Skill, practice, the quality of the materials matter, just like they do for the craft worker making a mug or weaving a basket. The works are not about being unique, though this over time happens without this being the intent. I mostly want to examine how a painting, as a crafted object, has a use value in our ordinary day, beyond an exploration of an idea that would lend itself to being considered contemporary art which, for the most part, is less interested in skill mastery or material quality. More importantly, can a painting hold both these philosophical and practical frameworks at the same time – humble usefulness for daily company and the successful exploration of a unique idea or concept? These are the questions I am asking as I read while knowing that my work does not have a physical use, definitely is not anonymous, and often it is not, broadly speaking, unique enough to fit easily into contemporary art sensibilities (presuming contemporary art can genuinely claim such a thing as sensibility).

Well, teabreak is over. It is time I set this musing aside and get back to the easel and see where this painting takes me next.

Work-in-progress on “Lady Arbutus” by Terrill Welch, 14 x 11 inch oil on linen covered birch board.

Reference list:

Yanagi, S. (2019). The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Books.

Answering the Painter’s Questions

July 20, 2026July 20, 2026 / Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

Monday, July 20 2026

Oftentimes, a painting doesn’t proceed in a straightforward momentum from start to finish. I need pauses to listen clearly to what the canvas is asking. Then the paint becomes tacking in the dry summer air and I must let it completely dry to the touch before continuing. Such was the case last Wednesday. I left it sitting in an awful awkwardness as if caught in an elaborate pose of painter’s frozen tag.

Work-in-progress of a new arbutus tree portrait on a 31.5 x 27.5 inch oil on canvas work by Terrill Welch shown on the easel in her studio. Wednesday, July 15, 2026.

I went to Reef Bay and couldn’t help myself but to gather a few random compositions of the seafloor. It is like picking berries. I don’t want to just let the ripe ones fall to the ground and forever lost. Instead, I collected them up in reference images and tucked them in the folder for “Close to Home”.

Nothing may come of them but they stilled something restless within me.

David had a birthday on Sunday and on Saturday family came to celebrate. That meant Friday was used for preparation and Thursday is still school for a few more weeks. So here we are with a dry to the touch painting late Monday morning.

The work-in-progress oil on canvas by Terrill Welch has now dried to the touch. She is ready to continue. Monday, July 20 2026.

I had about an hour available to me to paint. I took it! The linseed oil softened to the consistency of butter in the midday heat. I focused and then drifted on the gentle blue sea that has yet to come alive in the painting. I didn’t get far but still. It is something.

work-in-progress oil on canvas by Terrill Welch. Monday, July 20 2026.

We then went for a drive to get David a mocha and then stopped at a farm stand for the first of the blackberries and some sweet yellow plums. The deep warm of the sun kisses the air with their fragrance.

Local Mayne Island Blackberries and Yellow Plums. Photograph by Terrill Welch. Monday, July 20 2026.

As I drive, I am still thinking about the painting. It needs more paint I decide. And the arbutus tree really needs to pop as the star if it is going to be a portrait. Do I want to abstract the foliage both at the top of the tree and on the ground? Painting is a process of endless decisions and often there are no right answers but there might be better answers and one decision usually affects (undoes) several others that have already been made. But this is all the answering I am going to do for today.

Collecting, Gathering and Arranging

October 18, 2022October 18, 2022 / Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

The weather has stayed unusually dry and warm for this first part of October. It is suppose to change in the next few days. The trees and shrubs will be happy with a little rain and hopefully it will take some of the summer’s accumulated dust off of our car that we do not wash during the dry spells to conserve water. There has been a lot of wildfire smoke in the air recently leaving us with hoarse raspy voices to watch eery sunsets.

One of my favourite Arbutus trees is looking stressed but still holds up its corner along the shore at Georgina Point.

I put together two yellow cedar planters that I ordered from a Canadian company to go with the two of the the three ollas I purchased in the early summer from a local potter.

I had always thought that it was lack of sun that made things difficult to grow in my garden. Though this is definitely a contributing factor, I believe it is mostly that the big trees that take all of the nutrients and water from my garden beds which is the real issue. I discovered this by putting my first olla in one of my big clay pots. The mint and a few other things thrived even in the less than ideal amount of sunlight.

So we are going to try the cedar planters next year to add to my kitchen garden with a few salad greens and edible flowers. We shall see. The worst that will happen is that I will have to find new homes with more sunshine for the cedar planters. That I can do if necessary. This is not a cost effect plan really because it will take about five years of salads to pay for the supplies. But there will be much less waste and the salads will be fresh picked every day. I think it will be worth it.

On the painting side of things, I have been plein air painting…

It was a stunning afternoon and one that was way more delicious than the resulting painting on the canvas. Still, it might work.

I am also still doing the final review and corrections on the large “Arbutus Tree on Saint John Point” painting. It is close now. I only have one or two more brushstrokes to finally finish it.

“Arbutus on Saaint John Point” by Terrill Welch, 40 x 36 inch acrylic and oil painting. To be release soon.

Today, I will take down the rest of the still life show that I started to remove yesterday in ISLAND TIME ART. The gallery artists are dropping off new paintings and picking up the ones that came out of show later today. I will then get everything in the inventory and do the hanging before the end of the day tomorrow so it will all be ready for when the art room opens on Thursday. These change overs of shows are a bit of a push for me but I like curating and the end results always make me smile.

I also spent some time in the past few days pulling together and ordering a 2023 calendar for purchase. I think it will be the last year I do this, but who knows. Maybe I will grit my teeth and do it again. The product is expensive to purchase even wholesale and it has an expiration date which means hustling to get it out to customers before it loses its value. That said, I have dedicated fans who are terribly disappointed if I do not make this happen. So if you would like one, let me know and we shall figure it out get it to you. They are basically $42 CAD including tax and shipping within North America. If you pick them up from the ISLAND TIME ART room directly, you will save $2.00. I expect them to arrive early November if not before. Here is a bit of a sneak preview.

Well, this pretty much catches us up again for the moment. As you can see, I have been doing a lot of everything rather than settling in to just working in the studio or the art gallery spaces. It is sometimes just the way it goes. I admit to being a bit weary and wanting to conserve energy where I can but it is likely just the shorter days. I will simply be kind to myself and not push too hard until I can gather myself up again. It is a time that I consider to be “one foot in front of the other” until I arrive at some new place that is yet to be determined. Do you ever feel this way?

Hope you have a pleasant day and I shall check in again soon.

ONLINE GALLERIES include –

ArtWork Archive original paintings and acrylic sketches currently available

Redbubble painting and photography prints and merchandise

Website: TerrillWelchArtist.com

Feeling The Joy of Complete

October 11, 2017October 9, 2017 / Terrill Welch / 7 Comments

In recent years, I have not asked myself to be “out there” on the stage of public life as much as in the past few months.

There are oil painting classes to teach in person and online each week.

There are new art shows to curate and hang in the gallery every few weeks.

There are new paintings to paint, edges to finish, hanging wire to add and get into the inventory to be released.

There are paintings that sell and must be packaged and funds deposited using new technology. Here are two recent works off to new homes….

I can now do “SQUARE” with a whole new meaning.

In between there are the usual life necessities and yet we still find time for a long lunch after buying art supplies in nearby Sidney.

And there are still the daily walks, though often later in the day.

Walks with the trees and the sea of course.

Always the Trees…

Then it is back to the gallery the next morning again, refreshed, grounded and ready for another day.

What feels complete in your life at the moment?

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Two Arbutus Trees Rendered One for New Gallery One Sold

August 2, 2017August 2, 2017 / Terrill Welch / 6 Comments

I am still paintings as we are rounding the last corner into the home stretch for the Terrill Welch Gallery to open Friday August 4^th. This is my new normal as I learn the rhythm of both/and between studio and gallery.

Yesterday, saw the eight painting sketches arrive at the gallery for the first show.

The lights are now up and I am thrilled with the quality of luminescence I will have to work with for photographs.

Last Thursday, Friday and Sunday were painting days. The first is a plein air over two mornings of an arbutus tree caught between the sea and the road.

Morning along the Island Road Mayne Island BC 20 x 16 inch oil on canvas plein air

Details and purchase information HERE.

The second is a small study of a favourite arbutus tree from reference images.

Arbutus Tree with a View 8 x 10 inch acrylic study on gessobord

This one is sold already. Other new works are released in the online gallery HERE.

On Friday morning with a bit of luck we will have a live video of the opening of the gallery on the Art of Terrill Welch Facebook Page. If you want to be there in our virtual world head drop by the page at 10:00 am Friday August 4th. A few people who helped with the raising of the gallery and collectors will be there and the gallery will open to the public at 11:00 am.

How do you stay in the flow when adding something big to your life?

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com