Why Paint a Landscape of Avignon France?

July 7, 2014July 7, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 12 Comments

Fingers pressed to lips and on tiptoes I invite you to quietly join me in the loft studio this morning. You see, I don’t believe that my page full of “to do” items including paintings to be shipped to their new homes and time management will exactly approve of this diversion. But if we keep it quiet, maybe no one will notice us. So come on up. It is a little early so we will need to turn on the studio lamp.

With all the gorgeous west coast landscapes to paint you might wonder why I would travel half way around the world to paint a landscapes in France. The truth is I wanted the tension of a shorter, but still substantial, span of time. We might say that North America offers this with its more recent European occupation. However, what I experience on the southwest coast of Canada is thousands of years evident in the landscape and then the present interruption of humankind. Most buildings and such on the west coast still standing are less than two hundred years old. Yes, aboriginal people have been here for a few thousand years but they have left few footprints on the landscape. Europe and France in particular are different. We can still see evidence for easily over 600 years in one gaze looking across the Rhone River in Avignon France. This is somehow important to me as I intuit the tension in a landscape. We live in environmentally parlous times of exponentially climate change. In 2012 about half the world’s population lived in urban areas and this percentage is expected to continue to increase – quickly. the result is that our agrarian sensibilities and relationships to our natural surrounding on the whole are weak. For those populations that survive the next few hundred years, I believe this must become a strength. Yet, as we abstract our way through internal and external elements of our human creations, the natural landscape appears to hold little interest other than a thing of beauty and a place of recreation. This objectification of our natural surroundings places us and it at great risk through our false sense of possession or proprietary combined with ever-decreasing regard and understanding of the lines of tension and intersection of our relationship. These are my musings anyway and is the backdrop for my most resent painting MORNING BY PONT D’ AVIGNON (24 x 36 inch oil on canvas) and its cousin below of the same size which is still in its underpainting state with bits of masking tap marking lines of intersection and tension.

Judging from the plein air acrylic painting sketch I did, once the painting is completed these tensions will be mostly felt rather than seen (though now that I have so explicitly shown them to you, I am sure you will notice them more readily.) I anticipate that our eyes will keep roaming the scene searching for something until it unravels these tensions to the mind’s satisfaction. My desire is that we will know that it is more than a beautiful view, someplace to gaze, to sit, to stroll or to sail. I want us to intuitively sense the strength and fragility of this landscape – after all there are hundreds of years of human intersection with the environment visible in this painting and my intention is to inviting us to take the time for such an exploration. Our west coast of Canada has a much harder time offering this same invitation. It is much more immediate, wild and possibly even too forgiving of our ignorance – until possibly it is too late. So I have called on a morning in Avignon France with her abandon bridge across the Rhone to give us a hand.

I know! Here you thought I was on vacation and this was all about just painting another pretty picture. It could be I suppose. But I intend to instill such strength and tension in my brushstrokes that you will stay long enough to get past the beauty and to the substance behind this work. The act of painting is a spiritual exercise, a meditation, a recital of a poem and possibly even a practice of prayer. The subject in this case, in most cases, has to do with our fragile, temporary and continued existence.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must do a wee bit of painting before that “to do” list comes charging up the stairs and demands to know where I have been.

What invitations are you accepting to strengthen your relationship to our natural environment?

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

Canada Day winner of the FOUND IT painting draw

July 2, 2014 / Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

With entries from all over North America and beyond, the winner of the FOUND IT PAINTING draw for SEASIDE MAYNE ISLAND STUDY is from my birthplace. Image that! An email has been sent to the winner and I am awaiting a mailing address. Though this painting had the possibility of going to many excellent homes, this one will be perfect. I am sure it will be well-loved and very happy there.

Also, EARLY NOVEMBER SEA 14 x 18 inch oil on canvas has sold.

Thank you everyone who participated in my Canada Day Special event. Finding homes for paintings is not always an easy task and you have made it an enjoyable, fun and rewarding exercise.

As always it is a pleasure to share my work with you.

Other work currently available can be viewed in my Artsy Home online gallery at:
http://www.artsyhome.com/product/Seaside-Mayne-Island

All the best of today to you!

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

Artists Camille Corot and Terrill Welch Visit Avignon France 171 Years Apart

June 29, 2014June 29, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

The Pont D’Avignon or Pont Saint-Bénézet once had 22 arches. The bridge was eventually abandoned as the arches took too much upkeep due to being damaged when the Rhone River would flood. The four remaining arches are believed to have been built around 1345. My morning started with a 45 minute walk along the outside of the city walls to this landmark. The bridge was the inspiration for the song Sur le pont d’Avignon which is impossible not to hum while I decide on a spot to settle and paint by the river for another 45 minutes.

I want to paint this composition but cannot find just the right shelter for my canvas from the morning sun that will then also offer enough footing for me to stand.

So I move a little farther along the bank and settle close to this vantage point.

My intention with this acrylic painting sketch is to capture a first glimpse when our mind is still constructing the relationships between the various parts. I like to call this process painting the spaces in between. As always, the morning light changes quickly and even in 45 minutes there is this blending of time.

June morning by Pont D’ Avignon
25 × 35 cm plein air acrylic painting sketch on 185 lb. archival paper

Art prints available HERE.

A good mornings work but I want to go up high tomorrow and try another painting sketch.

Climbing up into the gardens to the westerly viewpoint in Avignon early on a June morning is magic and mystery. Across the way there is the Villeneuve lez Avignon with the broken Pont D’ Avignon below falling short of the reach across the Rhone River. The scene is not as easy to compose as I had initially thought. I move here and then there and then back to here and finally set up the easel and paint.

What I was struggling with is my desire to have the castle looking monastery which I have brought in closer in this photograph for us to enjoy it in more detail.

and the tower in the same frame and at the same time not have the bridge lost by the trees along the bank.

In the end I crunched my composition slightly in my mind’s eye to accommodate the canvas dimensions and my desires. Then I pick up the brush to see what will happen.

The light is changing quickly but there is still time for my eyes to rest on the scene. They do not. Fluttering across the landscape, with the same sweeping loops as the swallows above, I do not hover or allow my gaze to settle. I search for…. something and maybe nothing at all in the vast countryside – where last evening’s gypsy music and the chiming clink of hands moving to mouths along the narrow streets of the old-city still echoes in the sleeper passages of my consciousness.
Across the Way Villeneuve lez Avignon France
plein air 25 × 35 cm acrylic painting sketch on 185 lb paper

Art prints available HERE.
There it is with the painting compositional problem only partially resolved. I commit to finding a larger lengthier canvas when I get back in the studio so that I can give it another attempt.

Days pass as swiftly as spring to summer and we are in Paris walking the halls of the Louvre. I stop. Completely stunned I stare unblinking at…

Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. La Tour Phillippe le Bel. 1843 by Camille Corot

(Note: this photograph of the painting is on I took for study purposes only)

The Avignon landscape is unmistakable even 171 years later.

On the way to his third trip to Italy, Camille Corot stopped at Avignon in May 1843. Foremost among the ruins of Saint-Benezet bridge, beyond the Rhone, Villeneuve clearing by the Philippe le Bel tower. This painting was donated to the Louvre by Etienne Moreaue-Nelaton in 1906.

I had not seen images of this painting by Corot before nor did I know of its existence but I knew at a glance where it was painted and said to self – he must have painted it from up by the church to get that angle. All I wanted to do at that very moment is catch then next train back to Avignon and climb the hill and look for the exact spot that he would have stood to paint as the compositional challenge I had been struggling with was resolved by this placement of artist and easel. This is the beauty of combining studies of painting location with visits to the work of old masters! Our learning as painters never ends as it is picked up and looped through time and place with our brushes.

Camille Corot was born in 1796 Paris and died there in 1875. He traveled a few times from France to Italy to study the work of masters as was common for artists then and to some extent even now – hence my own trip to Europe. Corot is credited as bridging a shift between the neo-classical tradition of landscape painting and plein air painting, which lead the way towards impressionism. Camille Pissarro (1830 – 1903) was supposedly briefly one of his students. But where did the Italian painter Giovanni Fattori (1825 – 1908) fit in? I see similarities in this particular painting by Corot and the work of Fattori whose paintings I became familiar with during our time in Florence Italy. Had Fattori ever met Corot or been his student? I didn’t find the answer to my question but I did discover a detailed write up by Jeanne Willette on the Barbizon School and landscape painting which both artists are associated.

So as you can see, I have months and even years of continued discovery, exploration and painting to do as I unpack and breathe familiarity into our travel adventures. I think it is obvious that more than the trees have changed since Corot painted in Avignon. Painting itself has been through a few revolutions and I believe this process continues. I must in fact as I have two 26 x 36 inch canvas ready on this Canada Day weekend to begin the process of revisiting my painting sketches and references images.

I think I will take Corot, Fattori and Pissarro with me. They just might enjoy peering over my shoulder as much as you do 😉

What have you seen with fresh perspective through the eyes of an old master recently?

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

Raining in Narbonne France

May 28, 2014January 12, 2016 / Terrill Welch / 18 Comments

We didn’t know what to expect in Narbonne France as we knew very little about the city. We knew it had been a port before the river changed course and silt made it an inland city. We knew it was a medieval city at its heart and that there were ancient Roman ruins and a University. This was about it.

We climbed or rather crawled up the spiral stairs hefting the largest of our suitcases which I am sure has crept over its 50 pound airline limit (it is a good thing it separates into two parts for the return trip). The spiraling white piece in the middle is the hand-railing.

I wonder about what we will discover during three-day visit. We are on the third floor of a sweet small apartment. The bathroom with its small blue tiles is separated by a white cotton curtain from the rest of the low-ceiling one room dwelling. A short kitchenette runs along part of one wall with its stoic folding table wedged into the remaining space between the bathroom and the old wooden door. The real bonus is two good-sized windows that open wide and look out onto the piazza. This and the warm ochre carpet splashed between milk-white walls combine to make for a most pleasing short-term residence.

We cautiously proceed back down the stairs to get groceries for morning. Then exhausted, eat the rest of the day’s lunch and call it an early evening.

At about 4:00 am the day is beginning in our little square in Narbonne. The Patisserie is opening up to set out its outdoor table and chairs directly out front and also in a corner of the square. The rolling up of metal storefront blinds and the rhythmic movement of a hand-trolley pulled by the storekeeper lull me back to sleep.

By seven in the morning it is raining – hard.

I feel bad for the Patisserie as his early morning start has been a wash. Only a few students brave the wet and huddle in the doorway waiting for a break in the downpour.

I decide to go exploring but David being of the cat temperament decides to wait for drier weather. The streets are empty.

The late 12^th century Cathedral Saint-Just et Saint-Pasteur with its flying buttresses is near so I decide to start there.

The inside is a no-photograph zone but it is so dark one almost needs a flashlight to see the aisle let alone anything on the walls. However, the courtyard is beautiful

and the roses along one of the walkways to enter the inner sanctum are not in the least put out by the rain.

Walking along the corridors of the courtyard it is easy to have hundreds of years slip away and find oneself in another time, one where meditative prayer and silence are common maybe.

I like to look up in places like this. It is like something remembered but just out of reach of conscious articulation. Do ever get that feeling when you go new places?

Having found a most appropriate frame of reference for my visit in Narbonne I head out the side exit and across the narrow street into the wet marble courtyard leading to the Narbonne Museum of Art and History. A staff person tiptoed very carefully across the glistening surface. I took to the approach to heart and followed in the same manner.

There is a sad-looking angel on a pottery bowl at the top of the stairs

and I wonder what is John’s Club that can be seen out of the tall stairway windows that rattle loudly in wind from the storm outside.

The museum offered a pass for seven sites for nine Euros or it was four Euros for just the Art Museum. On a whim I purchased the pass to the seven sites and succeeded in setting the course of discovery for our time in Narbonne.

After a lengthy exploration of the excellent permanent and special exhibition including several rooms of 17 – 18 century dishes, including some in a most stunning pale green dinning room, I am ready to see if David wants to come back again for the afternoon and so he could get his seven site pass as well of course. There were many great works to see but there was one that I knew he would love as much as me. It isn’t a large painting but rather about a middle size at 55 x 68 cm. The work is by an Italian painter Gaspare Traversi (1732-1769) and is called Mendiant accroupi or A Beggar…

It is the emotion and compositional strength of this image as well as pure skill in foreshortening that had me coming back to this painting several times. Every centimeter of this canvas is in full use and allows you no room to shrink from the image. The beggar has seen us. We must respond in some way and whatever that way is he and the world will know. It is our human condition we are facing in this painting. This image, courtesy of the Narbonne art museum and published in La Tribune de l’Art does not really fully speak to the power of this piece of course. But it was the only image I could find to share with you. Other than that – off to Narbonne and the art museum with you!

The weather is breaking and there is a warm glow in the jute carpeted stairway as I descend.

I wonder what the ruins will be like? Well, that is the next post and we shall get to see at least some of them because one of the sites allows photographs!

If it was a rainy day and you could be in any museum in the world, what painting would you want to be standing in front of with your inquiring gaze?

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

Sea Spray over Green and Other Fragments

March 17, 2014March 17, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 16 Comments

Having had a long and less than meaningful conversation with the still almost-full moon until three o’clock this morning, I am surprised to wake as the sun hits the tree tops in our valley. However, awake does not mean much under these circumstances. I gathered my camera and get a coffee, breakfast treat and sandwiches for lunch later at the local bakery.

Now what? I say to self.

Well, it is Saint Patrick’s Day. In honour of the day of green, a long ago almost forgotten wedding day and the blessing of being alive, here is a splash of sea spray over the green seaweed on the rocks at Reef Bay.

I am consciously aware of being in this familiar liminal state of neither here nor there, about to cross a threshold, at the edge or margins of life as I have known it. We are not always so fortunate as to have the advantage to prepare for such transitions and markers between this and then that. Today I do, at least as far as I can foresee. Let’s unpack this moment a wee bit before I go and call the banks to let them know about our travels.

On Saturday I worked or rather reworked a 24 x 18 inch oil on canvas.

FABRICATION – resting

This painting is about a deep despair that comes with global unrest and greed. It is about how we humans attempt to contort ourselves into something believable and good. We create fabrications that quickly are shaped into a kind of truth that is meant to secure greater wealth. These creations tarnish any good that was suppose to be the reason for our actions in the first place. This painting is about denying limitations. The limitations of oil, gas, life, beauty, and even greed. We can pretend to sit serenely looking out the window and watch the sunlight dancing on the sea. We can do this but eventually our body will remind us that this position cannot be maintained. We must get up, put our clothes on, and do something… even if it is only to slaughter a lamb for dinner. There is hope. The sky is blue.

This painting, as with the underpainting, will not leave my studio. Some paintings are just like that. The work is not painted using a live model. I have however painted figures from live models and at one time there was a reference sketch when I did the original underpainting. Now, I think we can safely say that this woman is a complete fabrication a half-truth.

I have the first third of our travels booked from the time we leave Mayne Island with an overnight in Vancouver B.C. to catch a flight to London England and then to Dijon via Paris. From Dijon France we will go to Basel Switzerland before continuing on to Venice Italy for nine days at which time we will go to stay at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Florence for two weeks. During our time in Florence I will book the next part of our journey until we get to Barcelona Spain. My mind is filled with partial maps of strange cities and countries outlined by the short-stroked colours of pencil crayons as remembered in my elementary school mapping exercises. I am reading short stories by Colette and in between I clean the pantry, buy a new mop and string together the first names of our Airbnb hosts – Lindsay (New Westminster B.C.) , Kathy (Iver England), Tristan (Dijon France), Vesna (Basel Switzerland), Arianna (Venice Italy) and Nicoletta (Florence Italy). An email arrives to say the Queen of Burnaby ferry is remaining docked at Village Bay Mayne Island due to weather conditions. The CBC radio 2 host comments on a study that says if women have classical music playing when men visit their websites the women are found to be more attractive. For some reason this makes me think of a street image from last evening’s online surfing of Aix-en-Provence and then the paintings of Matisse, Cezanne and Renoir intersect just at peripheral of my mind-map. Again, I mentally comb the Cote d’zur shoreline. Where might we stay?

Ah, as you can see old patterns are fractured and lifted from there routine, making way for a new marker or reference point in my life. There will likely always be a before and after we traveled to Europe. So I must leave you the reefs of Mayne Island as I pack my present in anticipation of an unknown but easily imagined feature. We do not know really what it will be but the cracks of organized thought are temporarily widening between my past, my today and tomorrow.

Yet, there is a shadow on all of this with Russia’s confidence in taking Crimea and the United States and Europe in sanction-imposing but seemingly futile resistance. I am reminded that fate has placed me in an unexpected and unprecedented historical privilege. I must accept this. I must remind myself to be humble as I sparingly hand over wads of cash for our travels while cringing at what it will do to our modest savings account. We are not wealthy travels. We are however wealthy global citizens. We have all we need and at times such as this even some things that we want. I have no real answer for this disparity that I always feel most acutely during times of great expense. The guilt tinges all thoughts of the pleasures about our travels. The greed of it all in traveling for three months to Europe, how could I!? Yet, I will. I will pack that ugly little bag of privilege close to my heart and take nothing for granted. I will carry it so closely and tightly to my body that something good will come from it. I promise.

What green is your green on this Monday of Saint Patrick’s Day?

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

Tumbling Red Pears – a still life from conception to painting

March 3, 2014March 3, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 23 Comments

How does it happen that a painter notices red pears in the local grocery market? Then without looking at the price, she grins widely, grabs a handful and comments “they are for a painting!” How does this happen? What did she see in those pears that was more enticing than say the lemons or the oranges or that green skin of the avocado? Nothing. She picked up an assortment of these as well. But it was the red pears that she knew where going to be the main attraction.

Back home she arranges them this way…

and then that way

She settles on “that way.”

You see, she was caught up in some ideas about “seeing” and realism in a conversation that was hosted by artist and colleague Lena Levin on her G+ profile. Partly because of this conversation, the painter kept thinking as she was painting – what am I seeing? What is the influence of what I have seen before? Where are my mental shortcuts? She has no answers but starts and continues to paint.

As is common, there is no drawing to guide her brush. Her eyes must be her guide, along with her experience which is where the problem lies. It is in her experience that the mental shortcuts are developed and her eyes and brush stop noticing and actually “seeing” what is before her. She is even, in her noticing, not looking for details but rather relationships between light, shadow, colour and to-a-lesser-degree form. The painter understand that our brains construct images from rapidly gathered information from small areas that the mechanism of the eye scan and then the optic nerve delivers to the brain for translation and construction of a visual image. However, there is more information that is gather from the painter’s other senses that also assists in these constructed images. To name just a few bits of other sensor influence, there is the smell of the orange and linseed oil, the feel of the fabric and the planks of the wood floor with her bare feet and the sound of water dripping from the eaves. Then too there is all the previous data gathered about what a bowl of fruit looks like. There are all the bowls of fruit ever noticed and seen – both in real-time and in photographs and paintings. There are all the rules and breaking of rules about composition, about the actual process of painting as well as those about noticing, really noticing what she is seeing. Of all of this information, what will be the resulting rendering of THIS still life?

Well, the painter did not get very far before she decides to enhance what she is seeing. She adds a lemon on the bottom right. Yes, she says to herself, it should be there. And so it is.

What could be the harm of adding one imagined lemon? I mean really. It is only a little bit of yellow right?

The painter chooses to ignore that her noticing had resulted in imagining a whole lemon.

She determinedly continued to focus on the bowl of fruit. In fact, she focused so hard that the red pears began to tumble forward out of the painting.

This is about the exact point where the still life painting made a notable separation from its visual reference. It is that blue curving line on the left at about the middle of the painting that did it. Then, without any ability of the painter to rest the brush, another blue line of motion appeared on the bottom right. She knew then that even the slight visual impressions of the paintings in the background would go. They would be replaced by the gold fabric and the light leftover from the blue in the sky of one of these paintings as an easy reference for the light coming in from the skylight and the window behind the still life set up. This was now a deliberate mental shortcut.

Memory and imagination had conquered the physical evidence of what the eyes were actually seeing.

The intention of the painting had clearly become focused on the illusion of red pears falling out of the bowl – a focus that intends to encourage the viewer to hold out their hands and try to catch the fruit before it tumbled out of the painting. The painting is set aside until later in the evening and then, with a few edits that lead the painter’s work through to the next morning, it comes to rest.

TUMBLING RED PEARS 20 x 16 inch oil on canvas

It won’t be released just yet as the painting still needs to sit for its final photo shoot once the paint is dry.

Now we can ask the painter – did you know you were going to paint these red pears tumbling out of a canvas when you saw them in the grocery store?

The painter blinks, slightly confused and unable to answer as she comes out of her painting trance – her deep practice of noticing what she sees, a seeing that uses all of her sense, a seeing that is disrupted by her memory and is enhanced by her imagination. At this moment all she can remember, all she can “see” is tumbling red pears – the ones she imagined, the ones she painted on the canvas. This is her painting of reality.

When have you most acutely recognized that you were “seeing” more by your imagination than with your eyes?

Before I leave us, I want to thank everyone who shared last week’s Art Studio Spring Thaw Event post. Your ongoing support is what warms my heart and also grows the global awareness of my paintings and my photography. Without your efforts my ability to financially sustain my studio practice would be gravely hampered. So thank you, Thank you and THANK YOU!

Also, I am lighting a small candle each evening to focus energy on a peaceful resolution in the Ukraine. My mantra is – use your words. Listen and talk it out rather than bully and fight it out. My focus is calming energy sent to Russia’s leadership with this message. However, it isn’t narrowly directed and I disperse it as a blanket over all global decision-makers and citizens. You are most welcome to join me in this practice. I am an artist yes, but I am also more than that. I am a human-being and I desire to live in peace and I desire this for all of us. This, like the effect of full sensory “seeing” in this painting, is a tangible practice in attempting to render my desired reality.

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

Art Studio Spring Thaw Event

February 24, 2014February 24, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 4 Comments

When the southwest coastal trees of British Columbia in late February remind me of a northern winter, I am incline to take action.

Let’s turn up the heat!

Here is my Artist’s invitation to SPRING!

With the release yesterday of RED GATE (30 x 40 inch oil on canvas contemporary landscape) all of my current available work is now posted.

So here is what I propose: Including shipping, save 20% on a choice of over 60 original oil paintings by Terrill Welch during the next four days. The offer ends at midnight on February 28, 2014.

To access this savings, go to my Artsy Home Gallery, scroll down, find the painting you are interested in purchasing and then click on “Make An Offer” to send me an email that says “20% Heat Please!” and I will apply the Spring Thaw to the purchase price.

Alternatively, you can send me a direct message using any social media or an email at tawelch@shaw.ca and we can get things melting from there.

How can you turn up the heat on this spring thaw even without adding a painting to your collection?

Share, share SHARE. With each share a we are raising the temperature on this Art Studio Spring Thaw Event. Thank you for helping me turn this snow to green grass and daffodils 🙂

p.s. update to add a wee short Mayne Island winter wonderland video…

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

One Brushstroke After Another

February 10, 2014February 10, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 21 Comments

Life as an artist is pretty simple – just going along, one brushstroke after another. Home is where you hang your brushes and your socks to dry.

I took this photograph for my eldest grandson who has been known to tease me about my single-use devices. So, though I still wear a watch on my wrist that has the single purpose of telling time, this chair is a multi-use device. It is used for sitting on with guests in our great room. It is used as a prop in my still life paintings. It is used to keep paintbrushes, paints and water close while I work on a painting. And most importantly, it holds my wool socks while they dry.

On this particular day I drag this chair and my french box easel over by the kitchen to paint.

bowl of winter fruit still life painting in kitchen by Terrill Welch 2014_02_05 032

I desperately want some warmth and cheer. A few hours painting this still life bowl of winter fruit is just the ticket.

winter bowl of fruit in the kitchen by Terrill Welch 2014_02_05 016

There is a roundness of shapes in the warm winter light that is drifting through the kitchen while paint remains paint.

The finished painting BOWL OF WINTER FRUIT 12 x 16 inch oil on canvas and a poem that goes with it are posted over on my website Terrill Welch Artist HERE.

What are you doing one after another?

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

Drawn to Simplicity in the Photography and Painting Process

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

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

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

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

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

ABSTRACT MIST

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

GEORGESON ISLAND IN WINTER MIST

Quality Prints available HERE.

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

BENNETT BAY GULF ISLAND NATIONAL PARK

Quality Prints available HERE.

Or a few branches framing the farther off Edith Point…

EDITH POINT ENCHANTED

Quality prints available HERE.

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

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

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

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

What are you pausing to consider these days?

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

The Painter’s Horizon Is Seldom Visible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WALKING AN AUTUMN ROAD

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

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

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

A January west coast afternoon.

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

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

PROMISE – resting

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

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

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

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

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