Following is the final post I am sharing in my first unit of three units of my MA Fine Art degree. There are other post but they are more administrative in nature rather than research based. Therefore, I have no need or desire to keep them. I also might have sorted out the image collage transfers but we shall see. It is still advisable to read these posts directly in the blog rather than in an email share. The third painting study in this post is still one of my personal favourites in the series… I know. I am not suppose to have favourites but I still do and usually they are different than other viewers.
Friday, 14 March 2025
Back on Saturday, 22 February 2025, I completed the first of three explorative investigations of portrait oriented acrylic studies with shells in the foreground and land, sea and sky in the background. I had left this first study unfinished on Monday, 10 February 2025 for a few days while I thought about what I was wanting to accomplish with these acrylic studies as a method for propelling my work forward. In the previous three oil paintings, I had already decided to work in a portrait orientation with more context around my subject of the shells. Now I wanted to be able to change what I was doing easily on the surface to be able to test the usefulness of this approach without waiting for oil paint to dry or having to scrape an area it down to start again. Hence, the switch to acrylic and small 10 x 8 inch size.
Each painting process, from observation to reference gathering it painting, use both the approach of seeing with the whole body and mind presented (Loori, 2005) and considered the limitation of our sensory information present (Plato and Jewett, 2994, Rudd 2022). The differences and tension between these two theories about art and painting seem to offer maximum freedom for me to work. I can observe with all of my senses as closely as possible while knowing that I will still fall short of everything that is available from the subject. This seems to offer greater room for exploration because I understand that the information I can discern is flawed from the beginning creating less need to get it right and more room to explore my interpretation of the essence or make the essential essence of my subject present.
I had intended to take more images of this final stage of painting for ‘Shells on Sandstone Study’ but it didn’t happen. Instead I will share a collage of the work up to this point as a reminder to how it came about starting with the actual shells I had borrow from the beach (and will return) for a touch drawing exercise.
I settled in to paint and even after I reminded myself to take photos as I worked. I just kept painting! I didn’t even think of it again and then the painting was done.
Shells on Sandstone Study by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.
Artist notes: Intrigued by the textures, shapes and rhythms, I let them have their way on the painting surface while still allowing a small amount of room for a few figurative details in the foreground. This painting is more about hearing and feeling first and then letting my eyes find the shapes and colours that connect to the other senses. When I stepped back, I couldn’t help myself from thinking about artists Giorgio Morandi, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lois Dodd and Maureen Gallace. It is the power of shape over form while still painting from life that they have in common.
The good news is that I get to try again.
Monday, 24 February 2025
I started with a handful of references I had gathered midday in the rain a few days earlier on Friday, 21 February 2025.
I set a 10 x 8 inch gessobord on the easel and drew in some basic lines to get started.
Beginning on the easel – “Clamshell in the Rain Midday” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.First paint on the easel – “Clamshell in the Rain Midday” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.Blocked in on the easel – “Clamshell in the Rain Midday” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.Starting to build up paint and still on the easel – “Clamshell in the Rain Midday” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.
I could have stopped here.
Resting – Clamshell in the Rain Midday by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.
Or even here.
Continuing the next day – “Clamshell in the Rain Midday” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.
Of course, I didn’t. The final acrylic study ended here instead…
“Clamshell in the Rain Midday” by Terrill Welch, 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord.
Artist notes: The winter rain is steady as the heavy sky hugs the sandstone. One small clamshell comes close in its perfect composure. It holds the sea and the rain. Nothing else is necessary. I gave the clamshell my full attention along with the rain and the sea and the sky and the sandstone.
I did manage to gather a few more points in the painting process this time. I am not sure how useful it has been but they are there for future consideration. The simplicity of the shapes and palette still seem substantial to me, worthy of my attention. Visible brushstrokes offer a soft liveliness with their directional movement. However, could something still be missing? I leave it for now and start the next painting.
Saturday, 1 March 2025
I again selected from photographic sketch references that I had taken the day before. This time there were fewer than usual.
I had already determined that I was going to make up the landscape by drawing on information from all three images using a spontaneous decision making process.
Then I begin with acrylic paint, more determined than ever to capture my decision making process while I worked.
It is not easy but I keep stopping to take photographs.
A then another pause.
I am now ready to start building up the paint until I get to the point where nothing is working and everything element in the composition seems to be singing from a different song sheet.
What to do? I decide to start painting things out until it comes back together. There!
I move forward again only adding what feels absolutely necessary with each brushstroke. I got it!
Low Tide in the Reefs by Terrill Welch 10 x 8 inch acrylic on gessobord
Artist notes: Sandwiched between two reefs is a shell bed with fabulous shapes and contours. It won’t last. Tides are like that. Best to savour this landscape featuring seashells in the moment.
This third acrylic study is what I have been searching for in my exploration of the seafloor. Not just in the composition and colour palette. Those can change. It is the energy and closeness to my conversation with the seafloor on this particular day that I feel an affinity with when viewing this work.
All three of these sketches are notably to me a new direction in studying what is still a brand new subject. These small studies have the potential to be worked up into larger paintings and still work both as objects in the physicality of paint, colour and composition and as expressive subjects depicting my conversation with nature’s seafloor. I will keep going and experimenting with the idea of landscapes of the small paintings where I am getting seriously low and close to the subject while looking out and placing it within the context of its environment.
This process and painting is still within the first of the three unites of my studies. I hadn’t yet fully developed my theory and research practice yet. The data collection template came later. In addition, I have included a short add on post as it doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else easily. Going back over these entries, I have to resist the temptation to add in things that I investigated and discovered later on. Exploration is incomplete by its intrinsic nature and I want to preserve this in these transferred art research journal posts.
Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal
Monday, 10 February 2025
My days are full to overflowing with painting, reading, class and peer discussions, and absorbing my first tutor feedback suggestions to further develop my painting project about the sea floor. These threads remain entangled as I keep theory, research and my painting practice woven tightly together.
The American philosopher Anthony Rudd in his book Painting Presence: Why Paintings Matter expands on the work of Russian philosopher and theologian Paul Evdokimov and adds an additional fourth element to the three already defined by Evdokimov.
In summary, Rudd concludes that every painting has the following four elements:
The artist as the maker of the painting,
the work itself as a physical object,
the viewer as the person who looks at the painting, and
the subject matter made present in its essential nature. (2022, pp. 226-229)
Rudd’s fourth element is where I want to further expand or break open my investigation of the sea floor. The question is – how do I do this?
The tutorial feedback suggests taking more in-progress images so as to better reflect on what is happening during the creation of a painting. This is offered primarily as a way of stepping back. I am guessing this is not in the physical sense of stepping back because I already have a well developed muscle memory practice of rhythmically stepping back in my actual standing painting process. I am taking this suggestion to step back to mean more of an interrogation of my painting decisions as a way of finding other points of departure or consideration. Since this is nearly impossible, at least for me, to do while actually painting, my idea is to capture the process more thoroughly while it is happening and then step back to find new points of entry into my practice.
This takes unflinching, clear-eyed bravery which brings me to France and a letter dated Monday, June 24, 1906 by Rainer Maria Rilke to his wife Clara where he writes “After all, works of art are always the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.” (2002, p.11)
My colleague, painter, linguist and writer, Dr. Elena Maslova-Levin, used this quote to anchor my work in her introduction to our shared exhibition catalogue Conversations on Edge published in 2018. Not surprisingly, this prospect of going “all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further” remains a guiding proposition in my practice. (Maslova-Levin and Welch, 2018)
This may appear as if I have moved away from the theoretical influences presented in the western philosophy of Plato and the eastern philosophy of Dōgen about painting and art. However, the opposite is more accurate. I will come back to this again later on.
For now, I have a 22 minute video that details the development of my latest painting on a 30 x 24 inch canvas using walnut oil paint called “Seashells Afternoon”. This is also my journal entry for week 18 – documenting process.
Or view on YouTube at:
Note: The room view in the video of the painting is created using a digital tool called Canvy and it can be found at Canvy.com. The digital tool was created specifically for room views to show two dimensional artwork.
Here is the painting again while it is still on the easel.
Still on the easel in the studio – “Seashells Afternoon” by Terrill Welch, 30 x 24 inch walnut oil on canvas.
Review of My Painting Practice:
In reviewing my painting practice and creative process as outlined in the video above, I would like to further emphasize the aspect of painting being a translation of a conversation between my subject and myself that is then available to the viewer. However, the primary engagement is between me and the subject. My first point of reference is the specific nature of my focus. In general, the natural environment is my longest, most enduring and consistent relationship. This is the relationship with which I have the most familiarity and trust. All else in my painting practice is value-added and welcomed but also less critical to my process. What this means in practical terms is that art theory and research are additions to my established and developing painting practice. Therefore, theory and research are currently in service to my painting and must find their way around and within my discernment of the sea floor and moving brushes across a surface. I am not sure how useful this orientation is to my finding other points of departure or consideration in my painting practice However, it where I am at the moment. To further explore the relationship between my chosen theoretical approach and my painting practice, I am going to do a small series of painting study sketches in acrylic as a way of slowing the painting process down to moments of full stop and to have an easy ability to paint over with limited drying time. This should provide me with more critical information and assessment about my painting practice than I have now and hopefully provide a stronger overt connection to my theoretical considerations.
For easy of reflection and review, I am going include a private viewing room link on Artwork Archive for all works completed so far in this unit. This includes detailed information for each piece such a medium and size and my artist notes.
Note: If you are reading this as part of my art journal links assessment, to save time, you may want to wait and view the selected artworks instead of opening the link above.
For quick reference, here is a digital room view using Canvy that shows these same works to scale together.
Thursday, 20 February 2025
I want to include the first of acrylic painting sketch studies as it is a departure in paint from oil or acrylic and slightly different in process from the preceding work in the unit. Here is a tile gallery of the development of the work-in-progress on this 10 x 8 inch gessobord.
I stopped painting at this stage below.
The painting sketch is still on the easel for now while I contemplate its character within my process.
At this stage, the work has an immediacy of its history of development. Pencil marks show through. The ground is evident throughout. I look at it in all its raw nakedness and I remember how I held each shell while I was painting and then closed my right hand around it and continued painted. This part of the process is new. I remember that I used one of my references to assist with scale while doing the line drawing at the very beginning and then worked from memory as much as possible. This part of the process is familiar. I now am at a place of deciding whether or not to leave the work for now at this unfinished work-in-progress stage or if I keep going until I am satisfied that I have taken it as far as I can go. I haven’t decided yet because I am still assessing which will serve me more as I work to fracture or break open my practice for points of new discovery.
Element of Chance to Studying Seashells using Line Drawing
Thursday, 13 February 2025
I temporarily borrowed a few seashells from Reef Bay for this exercise to introduce an element of chance to studying seashells using line drawing. This exercise is an adaptation of an exercise offered by John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life called “Practice: Experiencing Without Identifying”. (Loori, 2005, pp.80-81) My intention is to place more emphasis on using my capacity of touch to determine shape and size by placing the shells out of view in a cloth bag and then reaching in with my right hand to choose one to draw while drawing with my dominant left hand. What I found most interesting was that more elements of chance were introduced than I had anticipated. Some of the pencils I had set out didn’t work very well. Sometimes I couldn’t find the shells in the cloth bag and I had to resist the urge to look and you can see me starting to lift open the cloth bag and put it down again several times when I was trying to find the shells. However, I did get to know the shells better even in this short exercise.
What I Discovered: My takeaway is that it might be interesting to do this again without recording and setting time constraints. I could try a variation by using a combination of visually hidden touch study like in this exercise and combine it with visual observation time drawing that is repeated in a rhythmic pattern like the sea exposing and covering the shells. I could maybe do it by opening and closing my hand that is holding the shell. It might be interesting to do this with one of my video recordings observations offering the sounds of the sea at the same time or by drawing by the sea once it gets warmer. The idea is not to trick myself but to strengthen my relationship with touch as a source of sensory information in my painting practice. These are ideas for future exercises. For now, this video records what happened during this first line drawing practice exercise.
As I mention in the video, this could be done with any smaller objects. I chose the seashells because it is central to my project. I do not remove shells from the beach lightly because they are of significant importance to the health and wellbeing of the sea floor. For this reason, I will return them to where I found them now that I have finished the drawing exercise and will do the same if I do any further drawing exercises in the same manner.
Reference:
Loori, John Daido (2005). The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
It is worth noting that when I make these copy posts from my art journal, the gallery images make it to the online version but not the email that is sent which seems to randomly gather images from the media section instead. Therefore, I highly recommend when you get the email to click the “view ion the blog” option top right. I have attempted to fix it this time by converting them to a list of single images rather than a collage arrangement but we shall see.
Excerpt from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal
January 20, 2025
While I was finishing up the previous pair of paintings I began thinking about a way to get really low and do a landscape of the small at the water’s edge of the sea. I have been working most recently with the composition of all-over paintings of seashells and the sea floor by looking down rather than out. I started gathering a few references that I entangled together to come up with a workable composition.
Then I spent the past week painting to see if I could get it to work. The canvas is 24 x 20 inches as I needed more elbow and visual room to test out this notion and as usual, I am working with walnut oils over a red acrylic ground.
I started with the sky and distant mountains across the strait as these would hold the keys to the light for the rest of the painting.
Then I moved to the foreground before putting the darks in. This is a little of a reverse in oil painting practice but I didn’t want to lose or be heavy handed with the subtle value shifts between the far back and what is up close.
Now I can slip in those darks in relation to the rest of the work.
I kept painting until I had the whole canvas roughed in but it has taken me a while and the work is getting tacky.
I will now have to let it completely dry to the touch before continuing.
Several days later I settle in and work the whole canvas while making thoughtful changes including to the sky which was taking too much attention away from the foreground. Let’s start with a few details of the resting painting first.
Here is the completed resting work but I am fairly confident that it is finished.
“Seashells Midday at Reef Bay” by Terrill Welch, 24 x 20 inch walnut oil on canvas. Completed Sunday, January 19, 2025.
Artist notes: I sink low to the shore and look out over a calm Salish Sea with mountains in the distance across the Strait of Georgia. When back in the studio, my brushes drift over the shapes and play with the colours while pulling the composition together in an imaginative way. It could be an actual moment in time but it isn’t really as memory and references are unreliable partners between artist and a canvas though the rhythms of the land, sea and sky remain constant.
I am satisfied that it makes a painting and is successful in this regard but I am not convinced that I have pushed the idea as far as it can go yet. I am going to try some further looser close ups to see if I can have us sitting small within a larger landscape. In this one, I feel we can still stand back and observe as a viewer and this isn’t what I want for the work.
So closer, let’s go closer. I have a sense that if I do this, the painting will feel more abstract even though it is figuratively based. However, these are going to be small studies so let’s be adventurous!
This post contains several excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal because it is one steady flow of related notes in my painting practice for this time period.
Tuesday, 31 December 2025
I have only a short while to visit Reef Bay. A friend is staying with my husband so I can get groceries and come to gather references. Noon is not my favourite time of day but for the winter months it will work fine. The light is low. The sea is rough and the shells are plenty at the water’s edge. I took a short video and then settled into observing and waiting for moments to present themselves and, as always, they did…
I have my large Canon EOS 70D camera with a Canon zoom lens 70-200mm 1:2.8 IS II USM which in future will be called ”the big camera with the big lens”. My phone camera is an iPhone 11plus pro and is the tool I use most often when gathering references. Both cameras have their strengths and limitations. However, I find them excellent memory aids and an expressive art form all on their own.
I take a few images with both cameras for locational context and briskly walk back to the car.
On the 15 minute, slow 50 km drive home along windy forest-edged rolling roads, I think about how I only consider the physical context of my work for this project as being what is at the seashore. I do not include the drive or having left our strawbale timber frame constructed home with its in floor hot water heat and environmental friendly construction and living. The milk paint on the walls and seven skylights with large windows in three directions creating a seamless connection to the forests and fields around us remain invisible to the history of my work with the exception of my art studio that takes up the sunken room below the open kitchen. I wonder if these aspects of my creative environment matter. I know they matter to our life overall but do they have an impact on how I approach and do my making process? I write this to make this additional physical context visible.
Wednesday, 1 January 2025
Usually on the first day of the year, go out to the edge of the sea on the east side of the island to watch the sunrise. This year it wasn’t possible so I went to Reef Bay later in the day. The cold air caught in the wind and sliced into my forehead and bare hands. I knew I wasn’t going to last long but it was great to be there. It is a little later in the afternoon. On this day my husband has managed his walker around the soft ground of the house and out to the car that is parked beside the gallery pod at the gate. We have come to the beach with a mocha for him and a peppermint tea for me and along with muffins from the bakery. We are pleased to be back doing some of our favourite things such as car picnics that allow him to sit and view the water and me as I walk along the shore gathering references. I am getting more time to focus on work as he heals from a fractured hip and regains his mental clarity to his previous level following the trauma of the break, surgery, opioids for pain and the confusion of the hospital. His brain injury from a previous large stroke left us unsure if he could regain his baseline. We are relieved that it has come to pass. I am still required to provide additional support and do extra work overall. But it is much better now than the first few weeks and my wellbeing has returned where I can think and hold new information unrelated to David’s health needs. I can feel a new normal settling back into my art practice and studies.
I meander to the tidal edge and linger a little in the cold. It is good just to be alive and know that the people and places that I love are doing well. I settle low to the ground and gather just a few images with my phone.
Friday, 3 January 2025
I have been reading and thinking and thinking and reading for the past few days. Some of that thinking is in my previous post about the theories of Dōgen and Plato. I have gone from secondary sources to translations of primary texts in my literature review.
I go for a long hike down the central trail of Edith Point, a public conservation point that has the sea on each side with glimpses only on the north of the Strait of Georgia until the trail reaches the actual point. This is familiar land and shoreline to me.
I have been hiking the 4.5km return trails for just about 18 years.
Still, I pause to visit with special arbutus trees while mentally making inventories of previous paintings that have yet to include this beauty.
As I walk, I ponder. There is too much material to integrate immediately into my art practice and cover in a 3,000 word contextual study. I will have to choose and summarize the most important aspects for this point on my journey.
Saturday, 4 January 2025
In the morning I paint red acrylic grounds on seven small 12 x 10 inch canvases for painting sketches and one larger 20 x 24 inch canvas. I have the beginnings of an idea to paint the seven smaller canvases as a series where one is a progression from the other. I am not exactly sure how this will work yet but I want the canvases ready regardless. I have again chosen the red ground for how it will provide depth under the overpainting of blues, violets and whites.
In the afternoon, we again go out and take the recycling to the nonprofit processing centre for the island’s extensive recycling efforts. After this, it is to the bakery for car picnic supplies and then to Reef Bay. I again step to the land and sea edge and squat low to the ground with my phone camera. This time I am invited to notice individual shells scattered along the edge of the tide line.
These references, gathered over these past few days, are what I call photographic sketches. They are collected as sensory and memory aids and for exploring possibilities as they present themselves in the immediate present. I have no illusions about their purity and acknowledge that they are deeply entangled within the limits of the devices and within my life experiences, context and past gatherings and my musings about what use they will be in the future. Still, I want to collect them and desire them for their own record keeping capacities.
Sunday, 6 January 2025
Today is a studio day. I decided to work flat on the table rather than the easel to do the painting sketches. This is an usual way for me to paint but it is also the most practical because these two surfaces are too small to easily secure side-by-side on my large easel and too large for my small easel. I move the easel around to the end of the table and paint in a direction in the studio I have never done before. It was perfect with the misty filtered light coming in the windows.
I am still able to stand to paint and use my whole body in the painting process. Taking one of my images as a starting point I begin.
While I am painting, I cannot help but think that Plato’s cautions about paintings being a copy of a copy that is further removed from his notion of ultimate reality by using my memory and photographic reference prompts. However, he would have the same criticism even if I was standing in front of my subject and painting. I keep thinking that his criticism about imitation and shadows of reality in relation to my inquiry into inner peace, wellbeing and resilience might have some merit. Still, I paint on while holding this intention. I curve the brush around the things we have named shells and feel the sea washing over them under my brush. I work the whole of both canvases.
Without conscious decision, I build up the paint and shapes on the left canvas.
Then I stopped. I have no reason for stopping. I just stopped. Something deep inside me has intervened. I walk away from the studio neither frustrated nor upset or even concerned. I wash my brushes, make a cup of peppermint tea and I start to ponder. What if I do not continue painting in the same manner? What if I try to expose the process of experiencing the sea floor from more than one perspective as if moving my eye and body alongside the rhythm of where the land and sea meet? What might this be like if I did this in a continuous manner with the seven small canvases?
Monday, 6 January 2025
Could the world views of Dōgen and Plato meet together with the land and sea and my intention for inner peace, wellbeing and resilience somewhere in this making process? What might happen if I do this? Once I get this post up, I shall go back to the studio and see.
Before I do this, I want to acknowledge to myself that I feel totally inadequate to the task at hand. I know little about philosophy and less about these two individuals and their work. I have only a sketchy understanding of both that has become coupled with a drive to bring what is ordinary in our natural environment to our collective consciousness as something of value to be cherished. Still, I will pick up my brushes and keep painting while I study and learn. I remind myself that new ideas and processes do not often come forth completely developed. They must brew in the rich soup of tidal half thoughts, partial ideas and incomplete processes. This is not only okay, it is necessary and the most useful way forward.
Too Much For A Painter
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Too Much For A Painter
Morning came with a vibrant assault.
Deep cadmium and mineral violet
flung themselves carelessly across the sky-soaked trees.
Such promise!
I frittered it away…
going to the post office to ship a commissioned work to an art collector,
choosing almost ripe pears at the grocery store,
hanging a large painting in our local bakery,
visiting on zoom with a longtime artist friend in another country, and
reading passages by Plato and Dōgen.
Sadly, my brushes remain helpless on the studio table.
Regrettably,
ignored.
Maybe tomorrow
won’t begin with such brilliance.
~Terrill Welch, January 7, 2025
Research through Art Practice – reflection on lecture
Friday, 10 January 2025
In reflecting on the lecture by Dr. Michele Whiting, I find myself pausing at the youth of research and theory through art practice. My first thought was that my children, who are in their forties, are older than this discipline. There is a freshness and excitement that comes with this newness. Everything is still malleable and art research and theory can freely borrow and consider the best from other disciplines as well as developing and establishing its own nature. I remember this dynamic when I studied Sociology and Women’s Studies in the late 1980’s and then worked on a master’s degree in the 1990’s in Gender Studies. There were also smatterings of these same elements in the many positions of my various non-art careers where I repeatedly took on jobs without job descriptions and I later developed these positions through the process of doing so as to reach the desired outcomes. I find myself in a somewhat familiar place with research through art practice and I’m filled with great curiosity for what might be possible through rigorous exploration and critical thinking. I have no doubt that my painting practice will be the better for it, regardless of any other result, and this is the most important reason I am taking this MA of Fine Art.
Now to the reflective questions:
My position as a researcher and maker –
As a person with an established painting practice and who primarily works from my own references, imagination and inquiry, I am driven by a researcher’s attitude to making. What I am hoping for with this specific project is to create a formal structure for my inquiry that will result in a deeper understanding about how I get the results I endlessly seek and place them within the larger contemporary art field of research. Basically, I am seeking excellent company to propel my work forward! I sense that the approach of ‘Reflectivity and Reflection’ that is outlined in the lecture demonstrating a circular relationship between the studio and contextual and theoretical research is a particularly useful method of working for my inquiry and it is possibly the most natural fit with my personal sensibilities.
Has your understanding of research in a fine art context been changed, and if so, how?
Yes. Before starting this programme, I was only considering my actual making as my research and practice. I am now clear that my process of making needs to be considered from a much more inclusive perspective and take in my observation and reference gathering as well as the actual painting process.
How can you relate the lecture content to your own processes?
My endless iterations through reference gathering decisions in the field are where I have many chance encounters in my creative process occur. This process continues in the studio and then is taken back out to my field of inquiry and discoveries happen in my work through the wholeness of this process. Somehow, I had separated these two aspects as distinct processes and I have been considering only the later studio work as being valid a process and material for research inquiry.
What would you change or work towards and why?
I will be taking a more wholistic approach going forward.
Due to their importance, I have taken the liberty to gather together the references cited in Dr Michele Whiting’s recorded lecture ‘Research through Art Practice.’ There are a couple additions added from my research into the references and I did not include references to the quotes in the slides.
Selected and Important Works Referenced in presentation and Additions:
Dufourcq, Annabelle. “The Imaginary as Introduction to Ontology and Then as Fundamental Ontological Model.” Contributions to Phenomenology, 1 Jan. 2024, pp. 343–350, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-73826-5_21. Accessed 11 Jan. 2025. (Speaks to Maurice Merleau-Ponty “For an ontology of the Perceived World” 1954-55)
Time between studio and another sea floor painting process
Sunday, January 12, 2014
As new oil paintings rest on my easel, the passage of time and space between studio and sea seems to narrow with purpose. I have gathered some of this flow in my reference material and the resting point of the works in progress.
In an early post I shared where I had stopped with this loosely diptych pair of studies…
The week has transitioned between reading about theories of objects and things, human perception, Plato’s constant abstract true reality and Dōgen’s continuous change in the particulars of ordinary life combined with my driving need for immersive time beside the sea and in the studio where I bring my conversations with the sea with me to share on the canvases. There is no doubt about our flawed and limited sensory information. I will expand on the science and specifics of this later on. However, this process of exposing, defining and creating meaning around these observation flaws beside the sea is a mystery that continues to sustain my art practice. It is within this process that I find inner peace, wellbeing and resilience. Still, that act of thinking about sensory experience does, as you will see, have an impact on what perspective I choose and how I curate my conversations with the sea on the shores of Reef Bay onto my canvases.
The following are snippets of observations between the full stop in the studio and the completion to resting of two small studies. In my painting practice “resting” is the place where I have completed all I can in that moment and I am waiting to see if the work demands anything more. I keep the work where I can look at it from time to time out of the corner of my eye. I wait. Then I make a final decision to either change something or call it done/completed/resolved.
My next step after the full stop was to consider movement and the effects on what we observe and how my eyes try and catch glimpses of objects and shapes that can quickly be categorized and named… even if I get it wrong. My brain will make and hang onto a mistake until further information can refine my observations rather than leave a void. I develop the second canvas with this in mind.
I am disappointed. Now neither canvas works for me, either separate or together. What to do? I could still scrape them and start again. I decide against this and leave them to dry to the touch and return to the sea.
The sun softly lifted a heavy mist down at the bay. It had me thinking about how inner peace, wellbeing and resilience are something we put ourselves in a place to receive and then create from what is available. The three gifts from gratitude are always present and then form from our own making. This takes more effort if the materials are scarce but it is still possible and always necessary.
The midday winter tides are high and the long reef trenches of shells are outside of my reach.
A few days later, I go to sleep in evening thinking about big movements and large landscapes of the sea depicting small areas, something close and intimate and yet grand. I have an idea for my third study and a notion about changing the sea floor perspective from above to beside just as I would with a more expansive geography composition. First, I work on the pair of studies that I had started and continue to paint them together. Now I am more satisfied with the conversation being shared in these two.
I had found a way to attach the two canvases securely together to my small easel. I found I didn’t like working flat on the table at all. My trifocal lenses made it difficult to see properly and there is a glare on the surface that interferes with being able to read the values as I am working. Finally, my lower back complained about being held in the new position for several hours at a time.
I leave the painting sketches and head for Reef Bay again in the hopes I might find something to practice my new perspective idea.
The tide is still higher than I would like but there are some interesting possibilities to explore.
At first I scan out from the shore.
A floating mussel shell catches my attention.
I drop the phone camera down as low as I can without getting it wet and wait as the sea wash moves back and forth.
Sometimes the seashell is completely covered providing more visual interaction between the sea and sky.
I move a little farther along to a collection of shells just close enough for me to reach. The seaweed flashes back forth with the movement of the tide.
I repeat the low angle perspective tilting the camera out towards an unseen horizon.
Hummm…. let’s go lower yet. There! Time and spacial relationships seem to entangle in the flawed camera rendering of a copy of the landscape depicting the small along the sea shore that is then further distorted in my own viewing as as my human eye and brain scramble to make meaning of what I observe.
This then, and a few close up captured cousins, will become my muse for my next painting study.
In the meantime, these two studies are resting together and a part.
They do seem to speak well together about my experience and conversation with the sea. Yet, they may need a little more space from each other as if they are two separate paragraphs in the same story rather than one long run on sentence.
“Butter Clamshells Near Shore I Study” by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.
Artist notes: I stare into the winter sea tides and wonder at the rocking of the shells that shift with each incoming and outgoing wave.“Butter Clamshells Near Shore II Study” by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.
Artist notes: I stare again into the winter sea tides and wonder at the rocking of the shells that shift with each incoming and outgoing wave.
I have no idea if this new line of inquire in perspective of the landscape of the small will be fruitful in my exploration of how nature can instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience but it is exciting to consider and so I shall.
I finished the larger “A Long Land and Sea Story” 40 x 30 inch acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood painting two days ago. I have left it resting to ensure I am finished with it for now. I believe it is complete but as always reserve the right to go back to it at a later date.
The title of this artwork changed along with the impact of its final rendering when the above ground became more figurative in approach while the below ground remained more abstract and flat. The more I worked on the painting, the more powerful the land and sea history became. My original working title “Bennett Bay Middens” somehow became meaningless in relation to the longer story being told. The change from the proposed abstract and figurative elements was more evolving and embedded in my making process. It is an untended surprise from engaging with materials, memory and imagination that feels and seems just right to convey a slice through time.
“A Long Land and Sea Story” by Terrill Welch, 40 x 30 inch acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood. Completed December 29, 2024
Artist notes: Revealed is a vertical slice of earth exposed through erosion in such a way that the most of the surface of the painting has a narrow depth of field, holding space and time in the shapes of the shells and then releasing the viewer into an empty sky. For this work, flat colour is used for the aspects below ground combined that is broken by the symbolic red line and broken china with a more representational illusion of a three dimensional view above ground. The painting contains the notion of a slice of earth exposing the passage of time. I am using the red line to represent climate impacts. Broken china is used to symbolize colonialism. The final colour of sky to represent space and mood. I am asking myself – what does it mean for a white woman of European settler culture in 2024 to paint the eroding Indigenous middens from 4,000 or more years ago on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People in Canada?
It seems fitting that this is the final painting I complete in 2024 and it will also be the first painting released in 2025. I need a long story such as this right now, one that can take me past the present short days of grey skies and cold damp west coast winter drizzle.
It is easier to comprehend the size of this work if I share it in a digital room view.
I feel the weight of these coming January and early February days. I shall walk the shore of Reef Bay, paint in the studio and read about material methods, research and thinking about things in the book by Sophie Woodward. It is just six short weeks until the days are much longer and the island’s early spring begins to creep to the surface. I have a lot I want and need to do during this time. The annual deep quiet of our island during these weeks and the isolation will assist me with these tasks.
Research into Middens and Materials For Paintings
December 6, 2024
Painting from photo references and imagination with tiles screws and broken bone china at the top attached with Golden Soft Acrylic Gel Medium (archival and stays flexible) and walnut oil paint over primed cradled wood surface.
The middens remind us that the forest can be enhanced where people live or rather lived.
‘Intertidal Resource Use Over Millennia Enhances Forest Productivity’ excerpt: Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia’s coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is particularly the case over the last 6,000 years when intensified intertidal shellfish usage resulted in the accumulation of substantial shell middens. We show that soils at habitation sites are higher in calcium and phosphorous. Both of these are limiting factors in coastal temperate rainforests. Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) trees growing on the middens were found to be taller, have higher wood calcium, greater radial growth and exhibit less top die-back. Coastal British Columbia is the first known example of long-term intertidal resource use enhancing forest productivity and we expect this pattern to occur at archaeological sites along coastlines globally.
Soft Gel Gloss can be used as a glue substitute for collage effects.
Use instructions: The acrylic medium that can also be used to great effect for collage techniques is “Golden – Soft Gel Gloss”. Instead of diluting it with water you use it neat, straight from the tub. This will be perfect to seal the pictures as well, it really is a magic medium! Either paint both sides of the image you want to collage with the medium and attach to the surface you’re working on or cover the surface with a coat of medium, stick your image on, wait for it to dry and then cover with another layer of medium to seal it.
I gathered this research about middens and materials when I did the small study in March 2024. This exploration of the Middens seems important to my sea floor series even if a I consider it slightly on the periphery of the tentative main body work. There is an aspect of a historic more mutually beneficial relationship of humans with the land that I sense can provide guidance to my work and current and future viewers who engage with this work. I think of it as a reflection point or something to consider in our acts of daily doing and being.
Trant, A.J. et al. (2016) ‘Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity’, Nature Communications, 7(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12491.
The making process begins with a few paint marks in walnut oils on an 8 x 10 inch linen on board surface with a solid oil red ground. I wanted the solid foundation this deep red will offer to the much lighter overpainting.
I have a short video from my field work and reference gathering that I play several times as I work. It is the shapes and movement balanced by the flashes of light sparkling in the water that most interesting me. I reach down into the soft ripples of water caressing the clamshell and set down the broadest of brush marks onto the surface.
My intention for this work is to instil a sense of inner peace, resilience and wellbeing. The work is a reminder of who I am after a stressful and tumultuous couple of weeks. I need this making process almost as much as I need to breathe. I can feel myself centre and my shoulders relax as I work.
I now sit writing these notes as the December afternoon low sun streams into the studio and across the kitchen beside where I am sitting. The house is quiet. A soft breeze moves the branches gently on the large for trees outside the window. I am grateful for this rural bounty. I am grateful for life. I am grateful for the technology that allows me to capture bits of my world and the tools to create passages of conversation with our surrounding environment, particularly the sea, the Salish Sea if I want to be more specific. Even when I cannot physically get there, the sea remains close to me as the tides move back and forth against the edges of my memory. The small work now rests in front of the larger painting I will continue working on before daylight tomorrow.
“Varnish Clamshell in the Flow” by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch walnut oil on linen board. Completed December 10, 2024
Artist notes: I had gone to Bennett Bay and along the beach to where a season creek was flowing into the sea and washing over seashells along the way. They varnish clamshells created a light musical sound as the water passed over them. The beauty of the shapes and sounds created a textured resonance in my being. For those moments inner peace is held, in those shapes, in those colours and sounds. I find inner peace in the abstracted loosen of the brushstrokes, gifted to the linen surface without misgivings or hesitation. This is the full body experience I aim to capture in this small painting completed in oil, wet-in-wet, in the studio a month later.
It feels good to be back working in my physical studio again!
This post combines three separate original entries into this one post. I rarely use digital painting tools but they came in handy when I had to be away from my art studio for an unknown amount of time.
Exploring the Work of Artist Joan Jonas: ‘We come from the sea’
Tuesday, 19 November 2024
Yesterday, I was going on my daily 4 km circuit walk around our neighbourhood crescent that we have imagined for ourselves as a practical, low maintenance and enjoyable treadmill. Sometimes, I just walk up the hill on Bowsprite Crescent, along Wood Dale Drive down the other side of Bowsprite Crescent and back to where I started and then around again, six times. Other times while I walk, I listen to music or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national public radio.
On Monday, 18 November 2024, I decided to listen to CBC Radio One live with Nahlah Ayed and ‘Ideas in the Afternoon’. Ayed was presenting an interview by Mary Lynk with American artist Joan Jonas that was first published on CBC 22 October 2024. The interview had been done in July of this year and Joan Jonas is vibrant, engaging and 88 years old. I was still listening when I had finished my walk. When I came back into the house, I quickly wrote down the information to be able to find the podcast later.
Today, I listened to the interview again. What has deeply intrigued me is Jonas’ remarks about the our human relationship to the sea:
‘We come from the sea. We don’t think about it very often, but our semicircular canals are similar to those of the fish. Our eyes are similar. We have backbones and the fish grew little legs and came out of the sea and then developed into what we are today,’ she explained (Lynk, 2024).
‘There are different theories about how that happened. My idea is that we have a memory of that somewhere in our unconscious. We remember that we come from the sea. It’s not a memory. It’s a feeling. It’s in our DNA. I think that’s where all these stories come from and our desire to go back to the sea, our desire to swim underwater’(Lynk, 2024).
However, it is most powerful to hear Jonas read her words at 6:30 on the 53:59 podcast. There is power and conviction in her voice as if she is lifting her words up over the sounds of waves.
I find myself searching further into Jonas’ work in video and performance art. Her works are like having a conversation in the language of my inner most private self. Jonas uses memory, imagining, dream, her voice, her body and video together and exquisitely mapped out in layers within physical space using mirrors, installations, collaborations with musicians, performers, herself and the act of drawing or painting. These aspects are all present at once in a fractured whole of space and time which includes a viewer, possibly any viewer or at least no perfectly contextualised viewer.
There is something important for me here. I have yet to grasp what exactly. I know it might have to do with my observation and reference gathering practice. I am fascinated by how Jonas makes her process visible and part of what she presents in conversation with herself and others. There are fragments of continuation in her multimedia pieces that paint alone on a surface has difficulty communicating by itself. Has Jonas offered a way to see the length of my art practice as my art rather than just what is left behind with my body and mind on a painted surface? I am not sure but I want to ponder the possibility.
I place this note here in my journal so it can be mused upon during the weeks, months and years ahead.
Jonas, J. (2023) Joan Jonas in ‘Fiction’ – Season 7 – ‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ | Art21, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/x2WkckhWRxw?si=NhphxzLbyAm498tq (Accessed: 19 November 2024).
Working in the Unknown at the Edge of Knowing
Tuesday, 26 November 2024
In again watching Dr. Michele Whiting’s video lecture “Meaning Making/Making Meaning”, I am reminded of the power of full body memory. I am reminded about how much information is gathered that is not necessarily at first accessible through immediate recall of images or words but rather through sensations that were so very necessary before we developed a human capacity for language and naming – possibly the world of an infant or early humans. I sense that we do not lose these capacities but rather that they are often embedded beneath our quick short-hand ability to classify and organize information into meaning through naming and language of what we see and experience.
This brings me to the question of representation in art making, as distinct from visual imitation in art making. This has been a vexing problem for me and it is one I come back to again and again in my practice. Painting an ocean in my practice has less to do with the visual curve of a wave and much more to do with smell of the sea and the feel and temperature of the air and the impermanence of natural light and the specific sounds of water and shore birds – yet, in the end, there is often a wave and a horizon line that orients the viewer inside of the seascape to feel as much as observe this full body and sensory moment. I will not fully unpack this tension right at the moment but rather put the problem here as a placeholder to come back to again later.
Next, let’s have a look at the progress I made last week on the 40 x 30 inch acrylic, oil and broken china on wood with the working title “Middens in Bennett Bay.”
I worked upside down to layout and attach the broken china.
Before doing this, I had developed the composition first with a few lines in pencil and then blocked in the underpainting with acrylic.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have chosen a composition that is a vertical slice of earth revealed through erosion in such a way that the most of the surface has a narrow depth of field, holding space and time in the shapes of the shells and then releasing the viewer into an empty sky. For this work, flat colour is being considered for the aspects above ground combined with a more representational illusion of a three dimensional view below ground that is broken by the symbolic red line and broken china. This is then contained within the notion of a slice of earth exposing the passage of time. I am using the red line to represent climate impacts. Broken china is used to symbolize colonialism. The final colour of sky to represent space and mood. I am asking myself – what does it mean as a white woman of European settler culture in 2024 painting the eroding Indigenous middens from 4,000 or more years ago on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People? Who is my intended audience?
Here is a close up of the bits of broken china before I attached it with heavy body acrylic medium to the red acrylic painted wood surface.
Next is to continue the over painting with oil paints.The overpainting, except for the red line, will not be so bright but I am not sure what shades of grey, green and muted purples it will be yet. We shall see once I start working.
I also want to record that my physical situation has taken an unexpected turn following what should have been a short break on Saturday to attend my son’s wedding in Vancouver. Upon my return Sunday evening, as I pulled into the driveway, my husband fell getting up out of his chair when he stood to greet me and broke his hip. After an ambulance arrived and paramedics assessed the situation, a water taxi ambulance was ordered to get him and me off the island to the Victoria General hospital. Following a night in an overcrowded emergency ward, he has now had x-rays and CT scan and was moved to a hospital room in a unit while he waits for possible surgery.
After a full night’s sleep, I now think I have a plan to be able to continue my schooling, possibly by using a digital drawing and painting app called “Art Set” part of the time that will allow me to work from a raw start digitally as if I were using physical tools but in a digital format. Here is an example of such work from about a year ago.
I have little experience with this app which in a way might be useful, if one wants to work in the unknown at the edge of knowing as discussed in Dr. Michele Whiting’s video lecture.
I may possibly miss this week’s class on Thursday, November 28th, however, I am confident that after that I will have it sorted, though it is likely to be a challenging six months ahead until my husband heals and becomes more independent again.
DRIFTING WITH AN EBBING TIDE
Tuesday, 3 December 2024
I am still in flux drifting from place to place since Saturday, November 23, 2024 when I went to my son’s wedding gathering in Vancouver, British Columbia. Upon my return Sunday evening I came through the door to my husband laying on the floor with a broken hip that required an ambulance, a water taxi ambulance to get to the larger Vancouver Island in the dark, rain and rough water where we transferred to another ambulance and eventually made it to the emergency room forty minutes later. By this time it’s after 11:00 pm. Around 2:00 am X-rays confirmed the break and I reached a hotel room, showered and went to bed at 3:00 am. I stayed there for a second night and then moved to stay with family for a few days before moving to stay with other family members for the duration of David’s hospital stay in Victoria, British Columbia. Surgery has been successful, rehabilitation is underway and his release and home are a matter of days away rather than weeks.
In all of this, I did miss one live online class. However, my focus has remained strong and connected to my art practice and studies. I am more emotionally exhausted than physically tired. Plans are in place to be back on Mayne Island for my call early on Thursday morning. From there, everything should become more steady.
In the meantime, in addition to my regular daily walks in nature over the past week, I did a digital sketch today just to remind me of the sea and shore.
“Drifting with Seashells in a Receding Tide” by Terrill Welch, digital sketch using Art Set App. December 3, 2024.
Artist notes: Seashells crouch in a soup of life with a receding tide. I breathe in and let out a ragged exhale. I am remembering this moment for comfort and strength. I am remembering to gain inner peace and access reserve strength. I can do this, I tell myself. I can do this.
There is no separating life from my art practice. One aspect has always influenced and impacted the other in unexpected ways. Together they provide me with a sense of wholeness. I do not know yet how these latest events will change both my life and art. I just know that they will.
It is Canadian Thanksgiving today and I have begun a new painting about something that I do not already know how to do. It is an experiment, not unlike this early painting in my nature-centric, reparative Seafloor series.
Excerpt from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal
Saturday, January 25, 2025
This week on Tuesday, January 21, 2025, I followed through in my commitment to go closer in my sea floor landscape series. I had several reference options and decided on mussels as my subject. I gathered together a few images from my observations, some from as recent as this week. There are hours and hours of pleasurable meanderings and sitting and observing behind this selection that spans a period over the last ten months.
In the end, I decided to pull from this image from the beginning of June as a primary source of inspiration. It is the outside reef along the Strait of Georgia in the Salish Sea at Reef Bay.
I can still feel the sun on my back and the sound of the rhythmic wash of the sea over the mussels that brushes the salty air towards me as I crouch low to the barnacle-covered sandstone.
I decide on a close intimate view and begin to shape it onto a 12 x 10 inch acrylic red ground.
The darks must go in first on this one. Even then, it will be a challenge to hold them to the end and round the forms while still keeping the life of the work.
The painting is blocked in swiftly on the small canvas.
I settle in painting while moving the easel around the studio, up onto the kitchen area and then around that room several times to stay out of the direct bright low midday winter sunlight. It didn’t seem to matter much. I used the adjustments as visual breaks and kept painting. The whole process from beginning to end took only a couple of hours.
I separate out and frame just the still shiny and wet painting to share to my social media followers along with my artist notes, as is my usual practice.
“Mussels and Waves” by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.
Artist notes: Soft waves wash over the mussels and recede and then wash forward again to the tune of the Salish Sea. Sun sparkles like tiny bells of joy off the wet mussels. I am building inner peace, wellbeing and above all resilience. This unassuming painting is my protest against our collective darkness.
A significant U.S. art collector of my small paintings inquires and then purchases the painting the next morning. This is her comment that I share with her permission:
I really fell in love with this one. Even without reading your description, I understood the painting immediately. Somehow I connect into your spirit so easily and I am thankful for such a gift.
There is no greater honour than having the stewardship of one of my paintings be taken up by an art collector. However, the best and most significant piece of this feedback is knowing that my intention for the work reached through to the viewer.
I now have the edges painted (and those of five other recent works) while I hustling to get this one ready to ship before February 1st and the risk of a 25% tariff being proposed by the new U.S. administration.
If this happens, it may possibly be the last painting of mine that is imported for a while. We shall see. Yes, sales are not everything as an artist. That said, I am a full-time independent artist with an art business that brings in revenue for living expenses and my continued education. This does not drive or even particularly influence my creative output… but it does fund it. Thankfully, the last few years have been reasonably good. There are no immediate concerns for now.
Let’s take one last look at this small study in a digital room view provided by Canvy before it is sent off on an adventure of its own!
Now, I am off to work on my contextual study for the week while painted edges dry.
Yes, this is still one of my least favourite painting task but it does get easier as the years go by.
Friday, November 15 to Saturday, November 16, 2024
Following yesterday’s weekly four o’clock in the morning Pacific Standard Time class, I went to see what messages our latest two days of high winds and rain storms had left along the shore at Saint John Point Park. It is a slow fifteen minute drive from my home. The Mayne Island speed limit is 50 km per hour maximum. In fact, we can get most places in fifteen minutes or less on our 21 square km island at this speed. Situated halfway between the two large metropolitan areas of Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria, our Mayne Island rural life is enjoyed by around 1,200 permanent full-time residents. The need for ferry travel on and off the island and only having one resort and motel creates an infrastructure barrier against overcrowding and caps our tourist capacity to about 3,000 – 4,000 during the spring, summer and fall. Therefore, on what we call cozy season, instead of more accurately described rainy season or storm season, I was not surprised to see the park parking lot empty when I arrive. The rugged and tree-lined trail I take is about 4 km long and winds across the point to a beach and then along the seaside of Navy Channel with low cliffs back to the parking lot.
The clouds were just beginning to break apart and let in a little light as I reached the beach.
Bits of shell and small peddles were beautifully placed by the waves on the driftwood.
Sometimes these storm wave conversations are full and richly shared.
Other times, the vocabulary is brief and firm.
Then there are the perfectly formed found compositions just waiting for me to notice.
I marvel at the intricate random placement of each discovery.
I think about how humans have walked these island shores for thousands of years and I wonder how many pairs of eyes have paused knelt to admire something similar. This brings me to this morning’s shared making time and working on the 40 x 30 inch “Bennett Bay Midden” painting in the dark with my one studio lamp.
I will have to settle in with it again and sort out a few things in the daylight but no permanent damage was done. After all, my references for these midden shells are likely about 4,000 years old. Surely, my time with them during less than ideal condition on the wood painting surface is made of equally tough substance. It is the continuation of time that interests me the most with the idea for this painting. In my brush marks, I want to hear the laughter, tears and worries of those that gathered to eat these clams and then toss the shells in a heap to be exposed again such a long time later. I want those brush marks to be like the waves that carry a connection between then and now and this next discovery I find as I study the shore.
Bull kelp is knotted as if having carefully tied up a package below the surface of the sea.
If only I could bring you the scent of cool, damp, salty waters that is laced with fresh broken fir branches that had been snapped off during the recent high winds.
I continue on along the trail to where ferns are hanging transparent and dripping after our heavy rains.
I walk onward through the arbutus tree grove and along the cliffs back towards the parking lot. This is where the tension tightens slightly between my subjects of the recent past and where I want to go with this new project. I have studied some of these arbutus trees for many years. They often feel like my closest friends.
This one is reaching the end of its life that has been shortened by several long summer droughts.
I have never painted it from this angle but my favourite is a larger work I did looking the other way.
“Arbutus on Saint John Point” by Terrill Welch, oil on canvas, 40 x 36 x 1.5 in (101.6 x 91.44 x 3.81 cm)
Artist notes: The portrait painting of this Arbutus tree seems to be saying “See, here we are. Just follow the trail and enjoy.” And I shall after a long pause visiting with this favourite elderly Arbutus tree because it won’t be with us for many more years. Painting these special trees is partly reverence and partly record keeping.
Farther along the trail, there is a magnificently curved arbutus tree that I I have become deeply attached to over the years.
I am not sure how many times I have painted its portrait from different angles in various weather. Here is one example.
“Arbutus Entertaining A Grey Day” by Terrill Welch, walnut oil on canvas, 30 x 24 x 1.5 in (76.2 x 60.96 x 3.81 cm)
Artist notes: As the elegant Arbutus tree curved around, framing Navy Channel, I thought it wanted to show me something. And I suppose it did. Who wouldn’t want to be admired with a trunk like this!
I won’t share anymore in detail but instead I will leave myself the link to the whole of my arbutus tree collection for easy reference later on as needed.
I know I will find it hard over the next couple of years to walk past these arbutus tree beauties and not set them to paint and canvas. However, my compromise is to simply take references as desired and file them away for later. This shift in focus does not need to be forever, just for now. It feels like keeping my footing solid as I venture forward into the unknown of this programme that I suspect will take me in directions I have yet to discover. I want to be flexible and ready to overturn limiting believes and discover blind spots in my critical thinking and art practice while at the same time carrying the best from the past with me, even if I throw various aspect aside as I go.
I keep walking. There are still no other vehicles in the park parking when I return. It seems as if no one else has arrived since I left a few hours ago. I really don’t mind. I was more than ready to receive this intimacy that nature had to offer. I read every possible note and passage for all of us.
Exploring Art Theories
Sunday November 17, 2024
Following a reviewed my journal and notes, I see a gap worth exploring. That gap has to do with developing an understanding of current art theories. My habitual reference gathering and studio practice is solidly established. This means I can put my learning efforts for a few weeks into researching and reading about art theories without anything going off the rails.
My background is in theories of Sociology, Feminist theories and Gender theories with my last attentive and focused learning ending in 1998. With this in mind, I thought I would begin with Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Cynthia Freeland (Oxford 2003)
I read the conclusion first starting (p. 138, Freeland, 2003)
Abstract
“Art theory is not like scientific theories, such as Einstein’s special theory of relativity or Darwin’s theory of evolution: there do not seem to be any ‘laws’ of art that will predict artists’ behaviours, or that explain the ‘evolution’ of art history by detailing what ‘succeeds’ in making a work beautiful or significant. Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction concludes that despite these differences from science, art theory is still an explanatory enterprise: it involves the effort to organize a dizzying variety of phenomena so as to try to say what they have in common that makes them special.”
Then the Introduction (p. xvii – xix Freeland, 2003)
“A theory is more than a definition; it is a framework that supplies an orderly explanation of observed phenomena. A theory should help things make sense rather than create obscurity through jargon and weighty words.”
“It should systematically unify and organize a set of observations, building from basic principles. But the ‘data’ of art are so varied that it seems daunting to try to unify and explain them. Many modern artworks challenge us to figure out why, on any theory, they would count as art.”
“A big problem about laying out the data for this book is that our term ‘art’ might not even apply in many cultures or eras. The practices and roles of artists are amazingly multiple and elusive. Ancient and modern tribal peoples would not distinguish art from artefact or ritual. Medieval European Christians did not make ‘art’ as such, but tried to emulate and celebrate God’s beauty. In classical Japanese aesthetics, art might include things unexpected by modern Westerners, like a garden, sword, calligraphy scroll, or tea ceremony.”
“Many philosophers from Plato onward have proposed theories of art and aesthetics. We shall scrutinize some of them here, including the medieval colossus Thomas Aquinas, the Enlightenment’s key figures David Hume and Immanuel Kant, the notorious iconoclast Friedrich Nietzsche, and such diverse twentieth-century figures as John Dewey, Arthur Danto, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. Of course, there are also theorists in other fields who study art: from sociology, art history and criticism, anthropology, psychology, education, and more; I will refer to some of these experts as well.”
“Art theorists also ponder questions about artists: who are they, and what makes them special? Why do they do the sometimes odd things they do? Recently this has led to intense debate about whether intimate facts concerning artists’ lives, such as their gender and sexual orientation, are relevant to their art.” (p. xix Freeland, 2003)
In reviewing these brief texts, I can see I have work to do. However, I shall start by reading this book and see where it takes me.
Reverence:
Freeland, Cynthia, Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Oxford, 2003; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Sept. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192804631.003.0008, accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
I am currently exploring the possibility of increasing peace through a sustained engagement with the land at the edge of the sea where the land is revealed and covered by the changing tides in what I am tentatively calling a macro landscape sea floor series of paintings. This series will aim to connect us with nature’s quiet yet profound rhythms, offering a visual meditation on the resilience and grace found within the sea and along its shores.
The paintings in this series will reflect the intimate gaze of observing the sea floor while the tide is low. I am searching to see if this new series will deepen my understanding of how our observation and connection with nature can contribute to a broader understanding of how peace is derived. If I hold the objective of understanding peace in my thoughts and as a direct intent of my painting process will this desire and learning be discernible and available to viewers?
My working definition of peace is best summarised in a quote from Etty Hillesum.
“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.” (Hillesum, 2002, p. 535)
Hillesum was born January 15, 1914 in Middelburg, Netherlands. She died in Auschwitz concentration camp on November 30, 1943 at the age of 29.
For this series, I am working with a rough definition of nature which includes flora and fauna in its natural state and the activities of humans who live and work respectfully in harmony with their natural environment, specifically as observed on Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada where I live.
Plans:
My best guess is that I will likely have at least twenty of these small painting sketches for my project over the next two years and I hope to have about twelve larger paintings tentatively in the size of 48 x 40 inches completed in oil on canvas. I have ordered some 12 x 10 inch canvas for the smaller painting sketches and studies and I will also likely complete some medium size paintings that are 24 x 20 inches. To answer some of my questions about impact of this work I will also want to create a viewer feedback opportunity. I am not sure how this will be designed yet or how formal or informal the process will be.
A few of my draft questions in relation to this body of work include –
How will I know if my focused intention on peace during my painting process creates a change in the areas of peace within me and/or in the amount of peace that is reflected and received by the viewers of the artwork?
Is there any noticeable difference in the paintings in this series from my previous work?
Could this work be powerful enough to impact both myself as the creator of the paintings and the viewers of the paintings by enhancing our ongoing experience of peace over time?
This completed body of work can then be shown together in a suitable public gallery or venue space or in part in my own gallery. It will also be possible to place it in a virtual gallery for online viewing using something like Kunstmatrix art spaces :
Separation between my act of living and my art practice are fleeting and microscopic at best. Sitting and walking in nature is accomplished within a flow of activities such as getting groceries, picking up the mail, car picnics, daily walks and providing primary care for my husband, David, who had a severe stroke fifteen years ago. As his cognitive abilities become more compromised, he can no longer stay on his own overnight and is finding it difficult to travel away from the island. My art practice exists within this tension of daily living and responsibilities. My studio is within our living space and painting breaks are used for putting such things the laundry in the dryer and getting potatoes into the oven to bake. The business side of my art practice is its own creature with a gallery space at our front gate that is open daily for walk-in self-browsing supported by an online gallery, social media posts and a monthly newsletter to art collectors and serious fans. Then there are the galleries and venues that represent my work that require less time but not none.
Since 2020, I have less ability to spend whole days traversing the shores and seaside trails. I have extremely limited ability to explore shores and trails off of our island. It is simply a fact. The constraint has meant taking my practice deeper into this specific place. I call it “thriving in place” and I completed a year of artwork in 2022 – 2023 with this intention. In fact, these constraints are what led me to examining and considering the sea floor as a subject of study.
Several times a week, I wander down to the sea shores around Mayne Island at various times of day to gather inspiration and photographic sketches for later reference in the studio. In my reference gathering of these photographic sketches, I often take a child’s view and get low to the earth’s surface. I have found this releases a kind of inner curiosity and strengthens my ability to observe without having to know what I am observing. It is a way of framing by shape and texture in those moments before my brain begins the naming of things. This allows me a more fuller multiple sensory experience and memory.
Once back in the studio, I edit and keep these photographic sketches in an album of references for my sea floor series painting project. I then take the images that resonate the most and decide how I might use them individually or together in a composition. From there, I choose a surface and set my intension of rendering the essence of peace as I worked from memory, references and intuition. I tend to work my surfaces wet-into-wet in a wholistic way building up passages in overall layers while standing at the easel and moving repeatedly back and forward from the surface.
Context:
What other painters and artists have approached this subject of peace through history and in contemporary art?
Historical –
Monet’s Waterlilies panels at the Musée de l’Orangerie Paris, France that were a gift to France. These are of particular interest for their all over painting quality.
Rothko’s Chapel in Houston, Texas, U.S.A
Matisse’s Chapel in Vence, south of France
Richard Diebenkorn, U.S.A and his series of work that moved between abstract and figurative landscapes.
Contemporary – This I am still researching though the work of Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, and Peter Doig seems like a possible place to start.
What artists and writers have a strong influence on my painting practice?
Since January 2010, when I made a commitment to develop a full-time painting practice, there have been many painters, poets and writers who have figuratively and sporadically sat with me as I worked. However, so far there are just two individuals and three books that have provided me enduring company during my journey. My frequent visits to these three books is evident in their tattered covers, pencil and pen marked pages and frequent bent over sticky notes. In no particular order, they are The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori (2007) and New Selected Poems, Volume One (1992) and Two (2006) by Mary Oliver. Both Loori’s book and Oliver’s two volumes of poems bring me back to how I want to approach nature and my art practice. There is an emphasis on observing, noticing while at times waiting for permission to access what the land and sea have to offer. There is an underpinning of honesty and respect that is devoid of naivety and false reverence.
Reference list
Hillesum, E. (2002) Etty the Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943. Edited by K.A.D. Smelik. Translated by A.J. Pomerans. Grand Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans.
Loori, J. (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
Virtual galleries for art | present your art in 3D | art.spaces | KUNSTMATRIX (no date) artspaces.kunstmatrix.com. Available at: https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en (Accessed: 30 October 2024).
Additional notes from lecture:
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Has the group session broadened or challenged your thinking in relation to your field of practice? How and why?
There are several observations worth noting:
I appreciated the reminder that we live in a globally influenced world where artists create discussion and discourse.
I am intrigued by the work of Dorothy Hood and her “Homage to Gorky” 1969, oil on canvas, Overall: 70 1/8 × 60in. (178.1 × 152.4 cm) that is currently held in the Whitney Museum of American Art collection. I am assuming that she means Arshile Gorky whose work and life I have recently been studying. Out of curiosity, I will do some further research to see where their work intersects.
New Materialism – read more about:
The Arts and New Materialism: A Call to Stewardship through Mercy, Grace, and Hope by Nicholas Leonard
Art and Design Education, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA
I am always fascinated with how artists use their bodies within their art, not just in the making of a art but how bodies can become part of the work such as that of Joseph Beuys in his 1974 “I like America and America Likes me” and also Florence Peake “The Keeners” performance, 2015. The idea of art being temporary in its physical form where only imperfect and partial residue is left behind in memory, photographs and video. Could this be true of all art, that in the process of creating, the work is already dissolving because the artist has changed, the viewer has changed and the art product has changed?
The Story About My MakingPractice
Saturday, 2 November 2024
There are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. There are stories we tell others about ourselves. Then there are stories others tell about us. All these stories are predominantly fictional with a skeletal structure of facts. It is not that we intend these stories about ourselves to be fictional. Rather, in the process of flawed remembering and telling and retelling, they come to be this way. With this acknowledgment, I have done my best to concisely tell others about my making process.
In my art practice, I make a conscious effort to remove myself as the hero in the work and allow my subject to hold this central role in conversation with the viewer, with the first intimate viewer being me.
This is the story I tell others about my making of a painting in 297 words:
When painting, I do most of my exploring before I start through incessant internal iterations developed from my reference gathering practice of photographic sketches and small plein air studies. Once an idea holds my sustained excitement, I begin.
I squeeze oil pigments in my left-handed, muscle memory order onto palette paper. I quickly mix a few colours knowing that I will make refinements later, sometimes right on the painting.
I begin with two brushes, one each for light and dark. The specific brushes are decided by the size and material quality of the surface and the marks I want to make.
I lightly hold an intention for the work and then start with minimal lines in paint or pencil to guide my process on the dry, often complementary coloured, ground or underpainting.
Developing the whole surface in rhythmic motion, I stand to paint and settle deeply into the core of my body rather than painting from my wrist or arm. At regular intervals, I move back and forth about six feet from the easel. There is no music playing. I prefer to work in silence allowing my subject to take up most of my internal and external meditative attention.
Eventually, the surface is loosely covered in paint. At this point, my reference materials are of little value and I set them aside. I again breathe into my intention. With soft focused eyes, I continue somewhere between my full-sensory memory for the work and fragments of information from other experiences. My brush-to-canvas movements are equally spontaneous and considered. After a while, I step back and pause. My critical thinking fully engages. I review what is left behind on the surface. Does it work? Is it asking for anything more? Have I said all I can say for now?
