We Now Have A New Gallery

August 28, 2022 / Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

The past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. However, everything has come together and today, being as it is my birthday and it is Sunday, will be a quieter day so I thought I would catch us up….

First, I started working a new 20 x 36 inch oil on canvas of arbutus trees this week. The canvas is just blocked in but I think it is possible to see where it going. It will be another in my Red Line Series. I anticipate this series being the second show in the gallery pod but it might be the third. We shall see.

On that note, let’s go to the gallery pod. On Friday, my trusted builder, Jean-Daniel Cusin owner of Mayne Island Kitchen and Bath, dropped by to give me a hand getting the track lighting and the hanging system in. This is the third gallery space we have worked on together and I had tagged him way back in December for assistance.

You would think it would get easier since we have done this twice before but there is still a lot of fiddling finding studs, cutting things to length and running to the hardware store a couple of times to get things we needed. Still, we got it done in a few hours and the next morning I twisted in all the lights into place and put the hanging wires up to get ready for paintings.

The anchor painting for this show went up first.

Then the other two large paintings that will keep it company.

From there, the hanging went fairly quickly and now the paintings are all in place, including the guest painting by Jody Waldie. Every few weeks, there will be one larger guest painting by one of the local Mayne Island artists who show in the other Terrill Welch Gallery adventure – ISLAND TIME ART. This gallery space shows their smaller work in the blue building with Dragonfly at the ferry but it is just not quite large enough to put in many bigger work. The gallery pod can handle them though!

I will write an announcement for the website to publish later today or tomorrow that is specifically about what is in this first show and more about visiting. I still have a few wrinkles to work out. Like, do I want labels or just a list sheet of the paintings that people can take away with them? How much signage do I need if this is going to function as a self browsing location with assistance as desired or requested? How much landscaping should I try and get done right away around the gallery pod? Who needs a personal invite to feel like they have really been invited? Just a few things like this! I still have time. The official opening is 11-4 Thursday, September 1st through Tuesday September 6th, when we will have both the gallery pod and the home studio open for walk in visitors. After that time, it will be just the gallery pod that will be open during the fall shoulder season for walk-in 11-4 Thursday through Monday or by arrangement on other days. The home studio will remain open by advance arrangement or impromptu visits if it is possible. However, if you are in the neighbourhood between now and the official opening, it is possible to visit the gallery pod. I will turn the lights on and put the open sign out from 11-4 each day. The road signs will be put up as well. Almost! We are almost ready after nine months since I started planning. I am totally thrilled with the outcome so far but you will have to come see for yourself or get me to do a video or FaceTime visit for you.

So this is it for the moment. How is your day going?

ONLINE GALLERIES include –

ArtWork Archive original paintings and acrylic sketches currently available

Redbubble painting and photography prints and merchandise

Website: TerrillWelchArtist.com

Pulling Canvases Off The Easel

August 25, 2022August 24, 2022 / Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Done and done! Ta-da! For weeks these two very different paintings had been languishing on two of my easels. Neither needed much but I still procrastinated and refused to stand in front of them and finish up. So, in a moment of clarity and gumption yesterday, I picked up my brushes and did the necessary work. Then, without ceremony, I yanked them from the easel and rested them on the stairs for one last peruse before taking final photographs and setting them aside to dry. Upon reflection, they are both early morning paintings. They do have this in common.

The first painting is part of a Red Line Series I am working on to depict the challenges of climate change on our treasured landscapes. If we look at the painting by itself, it is easier to discover.

Red Line Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park by Terrill Welch, 20 x 30 inch, walnut oil on canvas.

For more details and my artists notes click HERE.

Or we could place it in a room view with a floating frame just to give us an idea…

The second painting is primarily a memory that is revisited every year or so when I go home to spend time with my parents. This is a landscape of my childhood and the first that I drew and then started painting in oils when I was fourteen years old.

Early Morning Mist by Terrill Welch 16 x 20 inch, oil on canvas.

For more details and my artists notes click HERE.

And this one really does appreciate a little distance. Breakfast anyone?

Normally, I will place posts about new releases on my website. I was just so pleased to finally get these two completed and into the inventory that it seemed they should be posted with the art practice records. I also worked on a third painting but it was too late in the day for photographs. Another time. Now I can start on something new! Grounds are dry and waiting but I might have changed my mind about what O want to put on them. They had been prepared for a few more mountain Red Line paintings. However, the one I just did could possible have said all I want to say. We shall see.

I do not expect to be writing a post here everyday even though it will happen at times. I thought about setting a specific schedule and decided it wasn’t necessary. I am fairly good about documenting my work process which includes hikes, walks, reading about art and art history, watching art videos as well as painting. I have been doing it for years now. Some thoughts and activities are gathered into “A Brush with Life” newsletters and some will only be shared here. Creative Potager is my everything-out-on-the-tables-and-counters kind of working space. Thoughts and musings are mixed in with my commentary and missteps. I tend to need to document my process to some degree so that I can let go and have room for new ideas and new learning. It is just my way of being in the world. I suspect at times that my ramblings will make little sense at all and at other times, you will be comfortably nodding at my shoulder. Either way, this missives will be a touch point for starting to understand the paintings that come off of my easel.

Do you also tend to find that writing things out or saying them to a friend is useful?

Thanks for listening! 😉

ONLINE GALLERIES include –

ArtWork Archive original paintings and acrylic sketches currently available

Redbubble painting and photography prints and merchandise

Website: TerrillWelchArtist.com

Reopening with a Study of Oyster Bay

August 24, 2022August 23, 2022 / Terrill Welch / 4 Comments

It has been almost three years since I have added a post to this Creative Potager Blog. There is not a reasonably way to cover such an expansive absence. So, I have decided to begin again as if it were just yesterday. If the in-between is important to you, there are many public posts to read on my personal Facebook profile and in issues of “A Brush with Life” newsletter for the gallery. Now, it is time to anchor a new beginning and a practice which includes a slight shift away from social media and back to this blog and my website. I am sure the reflective peacefulness of this specific online location will be welcomed by us both. Let’s start with a recent study of Oyster Bay, Mayne Island, on the southwest coast of British Columbia, Canada…

Today was a low tide when we quietly pulled the our Red Rosy Subaru Outback down to the shore for one of our regular picnic lunches. After a few bites, I was out and searching for possible angles to capture the sweet, warm, summer blues before us.

The Salish Sea stretches along the Straight of Georgia as we squint towards the coastal mountains and Vancouver on the far side. Do I want all of the view or just a piece of it?

Or maybe just the rippling water reflections? I can’t decide.

But whatever else, I had best step it along as the tide is definitely coming in.

Now this lengthy stretch seems to be just the right balance.

But what about possibly adding a touch of rock in the foreground from over here?

Oh! Very faintly we can see Mount Baker in the distance. I will stretch the capacity of my phone camera just a little to reach out… and there! Got it! At least I have it enough for my reference needs.

As a landscape painter exposing the mystery in an ordinary day, these are my regular photography sketches. I do not worry about getting that one perfect image but rather strive for a collection of references that I can use to enhance my memory and imagination back in the painting studio. On occasion, these studies, along with small plein air painting sketches of the same subjects, result in a painting but mostly they become foundational information that builds sometimes for years until an idea becomes compelling enough to paint.

So there you have it! Do you also have practices in your life that are as much for their own sake as anything else?

ONLINE GALLERIES include –

ArtWork Archive original paintings and acrylic sketches currently available

Redbubble painting and photography prints and merchandise

Website: TerrillWelchArtist.com

Mystery of the Ordinary in the Japanese Garden on Mayne Island

November 26, 2015November 26, 2015 / Terrill Welch / 14 Comments

If you know only one aspect of my creative intention, I would like it to be my gift of the ordinary in our everyday. Yes, there are grand moments, brilliant moments and even tragic moments in our lives. But it is the everyday, the ordinary which holds the greatest mystery. On this day, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, I feel compelled to take you with me on a quiet walk of thankfulness in our local Mayne Island Japanese Garden. This garden is a work of volunteer love and healing in recognition of the Japanese Canadians who lost their homes and lands on Mayne Island during their interment during the second world war.

Through the trees in the Japanese Garden on Mayne Island by Terrill Welch 2015_11_26 036

Looking through the trees and standing in between I am thankful for all that is.

Standing in between in the Japanese Garden on Mayne Island by Terrill Welch 2015_11_26 031

Standing still and quiet as the winter birds shuffle the last of the fall colour on the ground, I breathe easy.

Last of the fall colour in the Japanese Garden on Mayne Island by Terrill Welch 2015_11_26 020

Have a seat and we shall stay a while longer.

Have a Seat by Terrill Welch 2015_11_26 012

Then, when you are ready, we shall walk across the bridge and out onto the small inner island of the Japanese garden.

Bridge in Japanese Garden on Mayne Island by Terrill Welch 2015_11_26 022

There is evidence that the seasonal Christmas lights are being strung. Today though, it is just the natural warmth of winter light and the last bits of gold in contrast to a thin layer of ice on the pond.

What is your own most powerful mystery in the ordinary of your everyday today?

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

A More Contemplative Year Ahead

January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 / Terrill Welch / 15 Comments

My best guess is that I shall paint fewer paintings in 2014 and release more photographs and painting sketches. This will be partly due to three months traveling and living in Europe. We plan to leave sometime near the beginning of April. The tickets will likely be purchased by the end of the week.

The 2013 year was a good solid success for my paintings but I want to go deeper into the learning curve of how my specific historical experience impacts my work. I want to go deeper into how I can paint the spaces in between light and shadow. I want to find ways to bring you, the viewer, farther into my work until you can clearly formulate the poetry of landscape. I want us to know and understand our embeddedness in our natural environment. Human life, as we know it, may depend on strengthening that one relationship. I suspect that my trip to Europe and its museums and countryside combined with my camera and brushes is going to help me find answers to these searches.

Oh, there will always be new work to release in my Artsy Home online gallery, such as the two new paintings entered over the weekend. But I find it is not really important but rather a task similar to organizing the books on the bookshelf for a research project.

What is important then?

There is quote attributed to Buddha that I saw this morning which seems most succinct:

In the end only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

My only commitment today is a long walk. With the heavy rains water is rushing to the sea.

Quite possibly it is a stone in a stream that will hold most of my attention today.

This , and a few of the lines from the Mary Oliver “Morning Poem”

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead –

if it’s all you can do

to keep on trudging –

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted –

reference; p. 106/7 of New And Selected Poems volume one (1992) by Mary Oliver

What are your focus and intentions for the year ahead?

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

In the Art Studio Still Life Painting

October 20, 2013October 20, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 9 Comments

Until the end of December, my Monday morning posts are about noticing blessings and things I am thankful for receiving. Due to my schedule this week, I am posting on Sunday instead.

What I am noticing is that I often take action when I am feeling blessed. For example, I am thankful for the local apples and pears we have been devouring over the last couple of weeks. So good! In fact, good enough to want to put a few in a new still life painting.

First, let’s set everything up and take a photograph or sixty just for fun. The painting will be from a different perspective but this gives us the idea…

Image available for purchase HERE.

Now for the beginning of the still life painting.

It is hard to see but the whole canvas has a light wash to tone down the white and then I just begin to find the shapes and colour relations not really worrying about the final result too much at all. Things will change and move around with time and light. The idea is just to get started somewhere.

Working wet-on-wet or alla prima I continue to build up the paint on this roughed in start. The minutes slip by and eventually the painting time can be counted in a few hours…

I must quit now. There is a meeting. There is super and then the full moon pushes against the fog and sleep arrives under the night sky. In the morning I push on. I set it to “rest” and have some breakfast. I make a few edits. The day passes into night and I make few more edits on the still-wet oil painting, until …

PITCHER APPLES PEARS on a 16 x 20 inch canvas

We now have a study of whites and how they are always leaning towards one colour or another. The tastes, smells and texture of this still life have slid onto the canvas. For this magic of creative process I am thankful.

Now to clean up the studio but before we do, one last shot…

Some of the pears and apples have been eaten. The brushes have been clean and the paint on the palette is drying but it is all still here.

May your Sunday be rejuvenating and bring a sense of awareness and comfort.

What blessings do your actions tell you that you are noticing?

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

Alla Prima: An Artist’s Race (paigeclarkfc.wordpress.com)
Plums Apples and Mostly Sunflowers still life painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Blackberries Golden Plums Transparent Apple Still Life Painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Golden Plums An Apple And A Green Vase Still Life Painting (terrillwelchartist.com)

Large autumn seascape oil painting released Today – Sliced with a Tear

October 4, 2013October 4, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 4 Comments

Released today – Sliced with a Tear…

Terrill Welch

There is something about autumn by the sea with the gray melancholy wrapped in fall colours. This particular day is one of those slow-baked, melancholy west coast Sundays, so moist and tender you can slice it with a tear.

This is the first of four huge canvases I have completed over the past several months. I started this painting last year about this time but it was not completed until February. However, I was not ready yet to let it go out into the world. I coveted closely, showing it here, on my blog and to close friends, family and art collectors but it was not for sale. Today though, I am ready and I am releasing this painting to a good independently wealthy or willing-to-take-out-a-mortgage home. This is one large painting! 🙂

SLICED WITH A TEAR 36 x 60 inch oil on canvas

Updated February 25, 2014: This painting…

View original post 113 more words

Evening And The Arbutus Tree – large Canadian landscape painting

January 7, 2013January 7, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 6 Comments

As, mentioned I will write more about this painting and the creative process later. For now, we have the painting.

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Your Creative Intentions: The Monday Post ~ January 7, 2013 (studiomothers.com)

Terrill Welch

The sun is going down fast in the late afternoon of November out on Georgina Point, Mayne Island . I marvel at the orange glow and the hues of the heavy mist in the distance of our west coast landscape. I knew then that this most-loved tree was once again going to grace one of my canvases – a large one this time. There is the coolness of a winter sea with soft waves barely evident on the shore. There is a quiet and a peace that often accompanies the end of a day. There is a sense of being alive without separation between land, sea and sky. It is often such with the Canadian landscape but so hard to portray in away that someone who has never been, never stood where I am standing will know what it is I speak about. Yet, this tree knows and seems to…

View original post 262 more words

Open window and life

December 3, 2012December 3, 2012 / Terrill Welch / 8 Comments

September 20, 2012 I stop to look at the factory-come-studio building across the street. The various layers of inside-out with its partially open window are a symbolic replica of my life. Some aspects seem clear and concise until I try to look more closely. Then most knowing seems to disappear under my scrutiny. The various compartments and panes separating and holding together with equal and debatable success. Yet, I am charmed by the window – as I am similarly by my life.

Open Window – Ossington St. Toronto photograph by Terrill Welch

With rain and darkness filling most of the last twenty-four hours I opted for visiting today. Baking powder biscuits whipped together, served hot with my mother’s raspberry jam and strong dark coffee wrapped soothingly around great company. The heated tile floors were cozy as our laughter soaked into the far corners next to the unnoticed cobwebs.So nice to have a guest in our home.

Tomorrow, I shall paint. Today I shall be. A pleasant Monday to you and I wish you all much success during the week ahead accompanied by the ability to accept what is.

What did you see through the open window in your life today?

ONLINE GALLERIES with Terrill Welch paintings and photography include-

Xanadu Studio Gallery for large original paintings

Artsy Home for most original oil paintings currently available

Redbubble for photography prints, greeting cards and posters

Current Local Mayne Island VENUES –

Green House Restaurant – small original oil paintings and photography prints

Farm Gate Store – one large painting

And by appointment at Terrill Welch’s home studio

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

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Terrill Welch Artist website at http://terrillwelchartist.com

Wait and See (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Sunrise (jemj47.wordpress.com)

Holding the Sea

March 9, 2012 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

The rain is steady this morning and the forecast is the same for at least the next five days. I have woke early, very early – 4:30 am to be exact. I have decided something. I have decided to shift my creative routine. Change it up if you will. Oh you might not notice to much of a difference as there is always something percolating to share. But I will notice the difference in my work flow. It feels a little like this photograph of the sea – holding.