Mayne Island

Defining “Close to Home” as a focus within my nature-centric, reparative painting practice

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Monday, 17 August 2026

“Close to home” at first, brings up familiarity, safety and comfort. It is where I live my daily life most of the time. Geographically, these days “close to home” is usually limited to within a day’s drive in any direction which gives the concept physical parameters. There is an ordinariness that comes with these sustained intimately observed passages of time in one place doing “the usual” things such as getting groceries, hanging laundry on the line, grinding the morning coffee beans, paying bills online, going to the dentist, getting the car serviced, working in the yard, hugging my partner, children, grandchildren and friends between taking long hikes, painting in the studio and promoting the gallery and artworks. I ask myself, why is this focus on “Close to Home” in my painting practice important? 

Developing red collage paper by Terrill Welch. August 8, 2026.

To answer this question is to first observe aspects of my contextualized autoethnographic references. The first and most obvious factor is that I am a full-time, primary caregiver for a partner that can quite happily no longer go further than the geographical territory mentioned above. I remain close to home because, to provide the best care for someone else, I must. The alternatives are to place my special human in respite care or to have someone come to stay with them. Neither of these options are easily workable in practice. By the time I get someone or someplace up to speed on this special being’s needs and them familiar with something they don’t want to do, the brief break becomes more of a traumatic ordeal for both of us than an actual opportunity. At least, this has been our experience so far. Eventually when regular weekly respite breaks become necessary, we will then have someone familiar providing additional support on ongoing. This might then present some opportunities for longer breaks for me to be able to at least go see my elderly parents which is a 7-10 day round trip visit away. For now, primary caregiving responsibilities take a central role, as a wife and as the human that is closest to the person in need. There are children. But the personal care needs and ongoing vascular dementia monitoring and prompting have gone well beyond their comfort levels and therefore not an option except possibly during a short term emergency until other care could be put in place. Community health home support services have been limited and expensive for what is provided. This leaves just me for now. We muddle through as best we can together which for now is pretty well. As an almost 68 year old white woman of settler ancestry, living on a rural small island on the southwest coast of Canada, I am resourceful, resilient, organized and pragmatic with a strong work ethic. I will face poverty level cash flows if/when the time comes to manage only on my own pensions. For now, there is enough to comfortably support both of us. But this reality is partly why I spent the past two years completing my MA Fine Art degree. It is a way to recognize the seriousness with which I take my painting practice that then might possibly lead to my artwork offering a small financial buffer if it is needed in the future. Global instability may make this a difficult proposition to realize but it would be even less of a possibility as an older woman artist without doing this degree. 

Yellow gauche covered collage paper by Terrill Welch. August 8, 2026.

This brings up other aspects about being “Close to Home” including a sense of loss of freedom, of heavy sadness/grief about slowly losing someone to their disease, as well as facing my own limitations and mortality. How long can I reasonably keep up with these responsibilities? How long can I manage living on this rural island as the only person who is able to drive?

Three sheets of collage paper created by Terrill Welch. August 8, 2026.

Then I return again to my painting practice and its central role in making all challenging situations much more possible, pleasurable and endurable. This is especially true if I turn my painting practice directly towards what is challenging. In doing this, I seem to find my footing and my strength as well as my joy and pleasure with simply being alive.

These are the thoughts that came to mind as I created the collage paper, cut it up and then decided I wanted to paint instead. So, I packed up the paper cuttings and put them in a bag for another day.

Collage paper cuttings and a sketched ready to paint in Terrill Welch’s art studio.

I expect to have much more to discover about my focus on “Close to Home” as I proceed but for now, it is time to work on a small painting sketch featuring morning coffee in my studio chair.

Solace Between Sea and Sky Painting Data Collection

/ Terrill Welch / 1 Comment

Painting Data Collection 

Title: Solace Between Sea and SkyDate Completed: Saturday, July 25, 2026
Materials: oil on canvas
Size: 31.5 x 27.5 inches (80 x 70 cm)

Figurative/Abstract Self Assessment Band-Scale Rating between 1-10: 

This work sits primarily at “4” with Camille Corot and April Gornik (Impressionism is a five and in the middle between figurative at 1 and full abstraction at 10). Yet it is a closer more intimate view that has us crouched next to the arbutus tree for company. The foliage above and below is abstracted but not noticeably so. The rest is clearly a figurative tree, sandstone shore, sea, sky and distant shoreline.

Reference Gathering: 

My references are from an early morning walk that saw me at this location on Edith Point at just before 7:00 am on Monday, July 6 2026. The sun had risen a couple of hours earlier but there were still hints of warm morning light. There is the arbutus tree of course but it was the totality of the morning’s walk that will later resonate in a more complete memory onto the canvas. The sandstone shore wasn’t just viewed. It was walked on and sat on while I ran my fingers over its sandpaper-like surface. The sea sounds were as soft as warm morning air flickering across my cheeks. There were other trees close by but I chose the arbutus and in the end its company is outside of our view. 

Reference inspiration for Solace Between Sea and Sky by Terrill Welch.

Making Process:

My painting process begins with a few composition lines. I have the notion of painting the tree “From the Ground Up” so that I can feel the forest overhead as well as under my feet. Yet, how will I create such a feeling? I also wanted to be standing “with” the arbutus tree rather than looking “at” it. I am listening to the arbutus tree tell me its story of time in what is a long and meaningful conversation. The painting process takes place over 12 days with moments of pause so layers can dry. But also pauses for the painting to decide what it needed from me. The last image in the collage is not the final painting yet but all significant decisions had been made at this point. My simplifications and exaggerations are in full view. Memory is often like that. We leave things out and make up other things to capture the inner resonance of what we want to convey. 

Painting process for Solace Between Sea and Sky by Terrill Welch.

Finished Painting:

Solace Between Sea and Sky by Terrill Welch, 31.5 x 27.5 inch oil on canvas. Completed July 25, 2026.

Making Notes:

Early in the morning I hiked along the outside trail early of the Edith Point Conservation Lands next to Strait of Georgia. During the summer the sun rises far enough north to slam this shore in brilliant sunlight for the first view hours of a day. The receding tide leaves small pools of seawater along the lower parts of the sandstone shore. Low clouds on the horizon still have a bit of an orange popsicle hue. What might it be like to be this specific arbutus tree rooted deeply along the high part of the bank and stretching day after day for every casual ray of sunlight? It is a quiet determined striving that I can take solace in. I soak up the moment for as long as it can last. Seconds really. Or maybe an eternity. Each brushstroke contains purpose and random execution at once. It is not the mystery of discover so much as knowing where I am and wanting it stay. This painting opens up under my first viewer’s gaze. I can feel the grandness of expanse filled with early morning’s comfort and possibilities just as I remembered it during my hike. 

Digital Room View for size reference:

Digital room view using the Canvy app showing at scale “Solace Between Sea and Sky” by Terrill Welch.

Reflective Analysis:

At this specific time, I am beginning a new thematic body of work that I have yet to form into a rigorous research question. I just know, I want to be with the trees and look down onto the seafloor where I have spent the past two years at the tideline painting close up work that I composed primarily vertically into “landscapes of the small” or “child’s view” compositions. One must hold the expanse of the shoreline above one’s head doing this work. I want to hold a grand view perspective again, even if I still crouch close to the earth. 

Reflexive Analysis: 

The title has the “solace” as a primary reference. I find in a moment of solace, as here in the company of the arbutus tree and taking in the sea and sky, there is also acknowledgment of pain or grief. The desire or need for solace necessarily describes the other. From my first viewer’s gaze, maybe due to my own painter’s hand, I can fully sense both of these halves that make a whole. I was raw and tired as I pushed hard to get the last of my assignment materials ready for assessment. We had lost our home support services due to retirement so my partner and I were working out how we were going to best do his showers together, just the two of us. We found a way but new routines are harder, for both of us, when someone has dementia. But in the end we came up with an even better solution than how he was showering before and a method that allowed him more independents under my prompts and supervision. So this arbutus tree is not just comfort but also a symbol or inner strength, perseverance and resilience. Standing with this tree, I have company during my most challenging doubts and fears and exhaustion. I come away from the view and the easel ready to continue and step just a little lighter from the warmth of such an early morning expanse and the recognition that all things are interconnected and whole, for this brief moment. 

Key Findings: 

I had the desire to keep a wide range of brush marks between figurative and abstract but that isn’t what the painting asked for and I knew better than to question its lead. The process from inspiration to completion of the work took 19 days plus another two days to organize my thoughts and data collection to write about the process. So if anyone asks how long it took, the answer is 50 years of a nature-centric, reparative painting practice plus 21 days of focused attention. This work doesn’t come easy. The paintings are moulded out of the blood flow that makes up my full sensory life and contemplated experiences. 

Anything else: 

The solution to an attempt that falls short of my intention is to try again. Keep painting, I tell myself. Just keep painting. 

What might you do to continue with something that you haven’t quite yet succeeded in accomplishing?

Answering the Painter’s Questions

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

Monday, July 20 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spiritual Connection in Painting Arbutus Trees

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

Monday, July 13 2026

I crest the low ridge just after seven in the morning as sunlight slams into the lower sandstone shoreline and dances across the sea to meet a soft mostly cobalt blue sky once it lifts over the fog resting on the water near the coast mountains. My eyes scan the elements and square up the view. It will work. I am sure it will work. I begin to gather references, shifting my feet and contorting my body to get the angles I desire. Nothing is perfect of course. I do not expect it to be. This is why it will need my imagination, a canvas and paint. References are a memory link and a starting point for later.

Now in the studio with the ground dry on a 31.5 x 27.5 inch canvas, I begin to block in various elements. A couple of hours pass. I take off my paint smeared red apron and document what I have so far.

The beginning of painting an arbutus tree along the shores of Edith Point by Terrill Welch.


It is almost noon. While boiling water for tea I begin to ponder. What does it mean to be this specific arbutus tree on this specific ridge overlooking the Salish Sea? If I was this tree, what would be the most dominant element? Would it be that soft peachy morning sky or would I give priority to the sea? Or maybe it would be the squishing of tiny roots spreading through the salal that I am standing in that is taking up the most attention. Perhaps it is the wind whistling through dried lower branches as it cools the first rays of sun? I am not sure I can guess. I sip my tea and look at the messy beginnings.

I have painted these arbutus trees many times but I am never done with them. There is a spiritual connection that seems to happen with arbutus trees. I imagine laying my hand on the large exposed root at the base of its trunk and let whatever is troubling me drain down into the earth on its long spidery tentacles. Losses and grief are good compost and best turned over and released into the soil rather than being compartmentalized and carried between my shoulder blades. 

I reach for a new book I am reading by Martin Gayford, How Painting Happens (and why it matters). Gayford begins where a painter knows he must – “Painting is difficult. Or rather, making a truly powerful and original painting is very hard (Gayford, 2024, p. 12). He goes on to explain that part of the problem is the long history of painting that has been practiced by brilliant artists ahead of me and that it is hard to find new areas to explore. This has never really stopped me from trying though. Not because I expect to paint anything particularly brilliant or ground breaking but because painting is a way of holding a conversation between nature and me and then later, with the viewer. What is the alternative? To remain silent? Better to paint something that is less than brilliant than to say nothing at all. 

Reference list: 

Gayford, M. (2024). How Painting Happens. Thames and Hudson Ltd.

The Reparative Turn in Painting: Embracing Grief and Creativity

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Wednesday, July 8 2026

Painting the Beauty and Sorrow of Loss – beginning the Close to Home Series

This series will require courage and bravery to honestly and frankly find my balance between beauty and sorrow within loss. I have other painters before me who have faced such challenges through their own brushes, such as “Camille on Her Deathbed” by Monet from 1879 where he stood painting beside his wife Camille, who was dying. 

Camille on Her Deathbed by Claude Monet, 1879.

Then there was time Monet was painting the lily pads following the death of his son while the echo from the guns of battle were audible in the distance. There is also Edvard Munch and “Death in the Sickroom” from 1893 when he recorded the death of his sister to tuberculosis.

Though these are more final moments rather than the proceeding journey of knowing and watching and bracing oneself that comes from caregiving someone in the later stages of dementia. 

What does the reparative turn (Forrester, 2020) in my painting practice mean under these circumstances? I am surmising it flexes on my desire, for now, to stay grounded and rooted on this earthly plain of existence. I will unpack this further as I continue to work over the months ahead. This is where my first painting in this series begins with painting the portrait of an arbutus tree along the shores of (what is now called) Mayne Island next to the Salish Sea – from the ground up. 

The morning began with painting acrylic lemon yellow grounds on a larger 31.5 x 27.5 canvas and three smaller 8 x 10 inch linen boards that will be used for studies and plein air painting. 

Terrill Welch laying down a lemon ground on a large cotton canvas in the overcast morning of the studio as her coffee grows cold. July 8, 2026.

There is something palatably thrilling in the tension that coils up inside the core of my being when I am about to launch into a new body of work. 

View down into the wood framed windows of art studio of Terrill Welch with small finished work lining the ledge on the left, new small linen boards with yellow grounds on an old washstand under the window. On the right a crumpled corner with throw and studio blue chair before the enamel topped table holding the artist’s apron resting on a covered palette beside the large wood easel with a substantial canvas with an equally bright yellow ground. A black anti-fatigue mat rests waiting in front of the easel on the grey stone finished ceramic tiles.

The only question remaining is – do I start the new work or paint the edges of recently finished pieces first? 

Reference List: 

Forrester, S. (2020). Painting from the Other Side: Tracing the Reparative Turn in Contemporary Practice. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 5(1), pp.116–147. doi:https://doi.org/10.18432/ari29486 

REAWAKENING MY PUBLIC ART RESEARCH JOURNAL

/ Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

Monday, July 6 2026

For the past two years I have kept an art research journal as part of my MA Fine Art Studies. Many of these posts have been featured in my “Terrill Welch by herself” newsletter. However, my degree studies are coming to a close. I am beginning a new series of work. Since I have found the art research journal useful, I have decided to continue the practice here, even though this space has, for the most part, been dormant since 2022. What is four years in a lifetime of an art practice!? Let’s continue!

You can learn more about my recent art autoethnographic theory and nature-centric reparative painting research practice, as well as my intentions for disseminating my new Seafloor series, on my website at: https://terrillwelchartist.com/disseminating-a-nature-centric-reparative-painting-practice/

You can also visit my individual final degree show that will opening on August 20,2026. It has to be up and published now for assessment by the university so you are also welcome to have browse if you wish at: https://terrillwelchartist.com/terrill-welch-five-seasons-ma-fine-art-final-show/

I will continue to develop my theory and art research led painting practice as I begin a new series, tentatively called “Close to Home”, as I again spend time with trees as I meander (what is now called) Mayne Island and at times capture domestic moment that connect nature with our daily habits within the shelter of our strawbale timberframe home.

Early this morning at around 6:30 am, I was hiking Edith Point and think about how I might proceed. There is the most satisfying summer task of hanging laundry on the covered clothesline of the side porch.

Laundry drying on the line. Photograph by Terrill Welch. June 14, 2026.

Or, if my significant other is still sleeping, there is my morning coffee ritual in the blue chair down in the studio as I watch the sun come around to catch the trees on the far hill.

Morning coffee in the blue chair of the art studio. Photograph by Terrill Welch. June 28, 2026.

Then again, reading on the bench on the other side of the house is also a moment I treasure.

Outside on the bench with wind in the trees for company drinking garden mint tea and reading the second half of Book of Lives: a memoir of sorts that I put down at the beginning of my 3rd and final term in an MA Fine Art degree delivered completely online. Photograph by Terrill Welch. July 4, 2026.

However, there is also the calm of a blue-green sea that make me exhale fully.

A calm green Salish Sea strikes an elegant pose. Photograph by Terrill Welch. June 28, 2026.

Or it could be sighting the clouds that show up in a tidal pool that holds my attention.

Clouds in a Tidal Pool. Photograph by Terrill Welch. June 28, 2026.

Yet, as I was walking along with the scent of soil and sea enveloping the lemony hue of the morning air around me, I thought about the trees and how they continue to teach me how to thrive while being rooted in one place. Maybe this would be a good place to start?

Early morning sun greeting the crest of a knoll next to the sea. Photograph by Terrill Welch. July 6, 2026.

There is an arbutus tree that has yet to come under my brushes and I am itching to see what I can do for its portrait.

Arbutus tree catching the 7:00 am summer sun that is already warm and scenting the air with sea earth and a nearby pine tree. Photograph by Terrill Welch. July 6, 2026.

This tree might be the first of this new series to be tackled at the easel! We shall see. Right now, ideas are being filed into an album of references so that they are ready as soon as I get a chance to start.

Welcome to a new journey and adventure in my painting practice. I do not have a posting schedule but will likely add something new each week so I can keep track of what I am doing. Until next time! Feel free to comment if you wish.

Kitchen Table Studio Day

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Singular drifting snowflakes on this Monday afternoon hint at the forecast for the week ahead. I paid no notice as I prepared three new paintings for release.


The second leaf was still in the kitchen table from a family visit on Sunday. Great! This will work perfectly to prepare a show frame or two and get new work into the inventory while also preparing an online private viewing room by special request for consideration of a specific landscape in a particular size range. Done! Plus, the work is also now set up the gallery pod for physical viewing over the next couple of days.

Next, it is time to pack up another painting for shipping to art collectors for a trial hang before they make a final decision.


And Done! “China Beach in Late February” 20 x 30 inches is now ready for travel. I might make it to the post office later today but my guess is that it will be tomorrow morning. I am still waiting for gallery visitors to arrive yet this afternoon. Still, overall a fairly productive Monday for the last week of November. This is the final day of the “For Love of Trees” show. Starting tomorrow, the gallery pod will host a flow-show and be open only by arrangement until sometime in February. In the meantime, I will be focusing on creating new work in my home studio. Therefore, I am mostly close by and can go out and turn the lights on easily in the gallery pod upon your request. Please feel free to ask. It is no trouble at all. Honest.

Tomorrow will hopefully be the start of another painting day. The ground is dry and if I can just squeeze out a couple dedicated hours, I shall make it happen. With two of the latest three releases already on hold, I am feeling like it might be a good idea to spend some time with the paint brushes in front of a canvas.

This is all from your landscape painter in woods on a small island off the southwest coast of Canada. All the best to you as always!

Terrill 🙂 👩‍🎨🎨❤️

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Winter Light is a Painter’s Light

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Though the daylight hours are limited, it is the winter light that is most promising to my painter’s aesthetic. It is that moody warmth and abundance of soft edges that grasp my brushes into its clutches.

From morning to the end of the afternoon, there are days that only seem to have a glow through the fog.

This was my yesterday. I did work in the studio but by 3:30 not even the studio lamp helped much. It is on my to-do list to make arrangements for a track lighting bar to be installed. Soon I tell myself. Soon. In the meantime, I was painting a night scene from a late ferry ride on our much loved Mayne Queen on Monday. The Mayne Queen will be retired from service on November 20, 2022. There is a farewell gathering at the terminal but I am not sure I will go. In fact, I am pretty sure I won’t. Public goodbyes are really close to being beyond my capacity at the best of times. So instead, I put all my memories into one quick painting sketch from our last ride starting with a few swift brush marks to find my way into the composition.

And here is “Last Ride on the Mayne Queen” by Terrill Welch, 11 x 14 inch acrylic on gessobord.

Artist notes: We got our own private goodbye with the Mayne Queen this evening. There was no cake but the Big Dipper was present and the steady rumble of that diesel engine gently lulling us across the calm water. I will miss this old gal and the views she offered up with humble assurance. Good night she whispers softly just ahead of the crackling of the announcement – This is Village Bay Mayne Island, Village Bay… and the deck lights come on. Safely home on this sturdy old ferry boat for the final ride. Thank you for your many years of service Mayne Queen as your November 20th 2022 retirement day draws near. ❤️🥂🍾

This reminds me to tell you about a stormy winter day when the wind was whistling a wild tune. All the big ferries were holding and waiting out the weather. We didn’t think we were going to make it home. But after a slight delay, we were loaded on the Mayne Queen. The deck hands told us to put on our parking breaks and go upstairs and sit down. After a few minutes the captain came on the loud speaker and repeated the same message. Make sure the parking break is on. Stay up stairs and do not walk around unless it is necessary. To say the least, that was some ride!

But getting back to painting, in order to sympathetically render such winter day or night light, one must be a colourist. This is because all of the greys and darks are leaning towards some other colour and it is not the same colour they are leaning towards everywhere. Once a painter starts to understand this, and paints with this in mind, then the paintings seem to come alive on their own within the directional brushstrokes. Yes, painting takes practice but also study, knowledge, applied understanding and then finally forgetting so that the painter can work intuitively from a solid foundation. Rendering a subject in paint is not particularly challenging. A painter can be like a copy printer from life or some photographic image. Yes, you still have to understand colour and composition to make a decent replica but it is usually not particularly difficult and requires limited investment of the painter’s vulnerable self. However, to render a subject with vitality and inner feeling racing across the surface in a way that engages a viewer who has no experience with the subject, that there is magic! There is a barely controlled expressive rawness to such work. Even quiet peaceful paintings can have this. It is the secret something that allows a work to stand strongly on its own once it comes off of the easel and is removed from its creative context. The moodiness of soft winter light gives a painter an advantage in being able to access this special magic. At least, this is how I experience winter light.

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Painting Unusual Skies

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This past week has seen me at the easel rendering two very different paintings. Let’s start with the last one first because it is freshest in my mind and still resting in the easel.

This amazing mackerel sky and with breaking rain clouds comes from the Cotswolds curtesy of one of my art collectors that asked if I would be willing to do a painting of it for them. After negotiating a few small composition changes, I said yes. This is extremely rare for me but sometimes a project is just so compelling there is no other answer than – YES.

The paintings is “resting” and needs my fresh eyes tomorrow but it is close and the feel of it is there.

“resting” Cotswolds Memories by Terrill Welch 20 x 24 inch walnut oil on canvas

Artist notes: This painting is a rare collaboration starting with an art collector’s image. Much research, my own memories of painting in England and plain imagination went into this homage to a fascinating mackerel sky.

So a second look at this painting will be part of my work for tomorrow.

The second painting is another that belongs in the red line series…

Fog and Smoke Reef Bay by Terrill Welch, 8 x 10 inch walnut oil on linen board.

Artist notes: with the change in the weather fog had rolled in over the sea mixing with thick smoke from wildfires across the border. The combination is as eery and unsettling as it is beautiful. This painting belongs in the red line series even though the red line itself is missing and hidden from view. Within sadness there are still incredibly beautiful moments, if one is open to noticing.

This painting too is still shiny and wet but feels like it is complete and will be set aside to dry before taking a final image and then being added to inventory.

The week ahead has edges to paint on the large canvas of the Arbutus tree and paperwork to file the twice a year Provincial Sales Tax. These are definitely not my favourite tasks but they will be done with good cheer after having focused on painting for the past few days.

All the best of the week ahead!

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Website: TerrillWelchArtist.com 

Arbutus Tree as a Figurative Painting

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There is a new painting on the easel. I love the curvy strength and elegance of Arbutus trees and I have my favourites. For now, this Arbutus tree rests on a larger canvas in the middle of my Mayne Island home studio. The last evening’s sun is stretching across the valley outside the window as the weariness of having stood at the easel for the past few days catches up with me. It is a good feeling.

The work may require a brushstroke here and there but mostly it is as it will be. At least, this is how I feel at the moment.

resting “Arbutus on Saint John Point” by Terrill welch, 40 x 36 inch oil on canvas

There are certain details that I particularly enjoyed painting.

There was a quiet, loose and easy flow of moving paint from the palette to the canvas as I was leaving marks softly behind in their purest form. This is an unhurried painting with lots of movement and freedom. I don’t think I need to say that this raw intuitive approach is one of my favourite ways to paint.

Artist notes: The portrait Arbutus tree seems to be saying “see, here we are. Just follow the trail and enjoy.” And I shall, after a long pause knowing this favourite Arbutus right at the tip of the point won’t be with us for many more years.

I have studied this tree since 2018 in all the season and various times of day. Only now has it had its first portrait painted. Painting Arbutus trees remind me of painting figures. The painter wants an interesting angle and intriguing light to work with. There is a sense of getting the tree weighted accurately so appears both supple and elegant. Then there are those sensual curves that should almost make us blush and wish the tree had more clothes on… or maybe that we were viewing them in private space as our eyes caress their length and limbs. When I walk amongst them, there is usually one hand or the other running across a nearby smooth cool surface of their trunk. Arbutus trees are just like that.

Let’s put this painting in a digital room view to give us just a bit more distance and scale as we take a longer look.

The painting isn’t ready for release yet. However, inquires are always welcome. I will look at the painting out of the corner of my eye for the next few days. Then I will make some final decisions on whether it needs anything more. For now, the painting needs to separate from the painting process and be seen for its own merit. This is the benefit of the “resting” period.

Next, I am preparing another 20 x 24 inch canvas for a commission received while art collectors were travelling in the English Cotswolds. It is one of those extremely rare times that I will combine my own experience of being in England with a reference starting point from the art collectors. This painting will be part concrete reference, part memory and part imagination. We have agreed on the elements of the painting and the general imaginative composition. Now, I just need to work my magic and create the painting.

I hope you have enjoyed this latest painting adventure and I shall catch up with you again very soon.

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