Mayne Island

LEAVING SOMETHING BEHIND – PAINTING PROCESS

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Thursday, 12 November 2026

I started a new painting today and I am going to make a concerted effort to get my MA Fine Art degree art journal moved over here more quickly so I can focus on researching and documenting new work. This is the second post from unit 2 of 3 units but there is still a lot of entries ahead yet.


Sunday, 30 March 2025

I was asked recently in a forensic review of my painting process by one of our tutors, why do I stop and take an in-progress image when I do? I didn’t have an answer, never mind a good answer. Dr. Whiting found still areas when the ground was still showing in my paintings interesting to further consider. I replied that she wasn’t alone and sometimes I resisted showing these stages because it wasn’t the drama with the ground I was seeking to express in my work. Their response was, maybe it isn’t the colour so much as the patches of smooth colour? Maybe it could be any colour? I concede that this is a possibility worth considering. Having finished this latest work, I am thinking there are other ways to provide stillness in a lively painting through the atmosphere rather than flat patches of paint. But we shall see. I enjoy being asked question about my painting process that I cannot answer right away. They become challenges or painting problems to be resolved. Anyway, it is another quiet Sunday so I thought I would share various aspects of my making process, starting with a tile columns of notes from beginning to end…

Tiled images of work-in-progress for ‘Leaving Something Behind’ by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oils on canvas.

This image is to be read like a newspaper from top left down and then up and across to the next column and down, until you end up with the image of the final painting in the bottom right corner. I begin with my field notes and then ask myself, how have these influenced the final painting? Is there anything noteworthy in the places where I stopped to collect an in-progress image? What do you think? Do you notice anything that I should pay attention to or bring into my awareness?

I usually just walk slowly on the shore of Reef Bay looking down and out and down and out again along the reefs until something catches my attention, like the dark purple pattern patches in this shell.

Sometimes, I carefully pick up an and examine it closely before putting it back where I found it.

Another times, I look into crevices between the rocks and see what has been left behind.

But it is usually not just one image take of any particular observation. This exploration goes on in a cluster of observations, usually resulting in a few dozen photographic sketches being added to my reference folder to remember shapes, sounds, smells, colours, textures and the rhythms of a place on a specific day.

Collage of photographic sketches gathered at Reef Bay on Mayne Island for later reference in the studio.

Then, I come back to the studio and decide on a surface to begin. This time it is a 12 x 10 inch canvas with a red acrylic ground and 1.5 inch edges that will need to be painted later on. I use a few of my images to imagine the composition and capture it in a rough line drawing on the canvas. I wanted to get that lime yellow green of the seaweed down first. It is the brightest part of the land and will have to carry the connection between sky, sea and sandstone with the shells in between.

Now, if you follow the process in the first tile columns collage image, you will see that I work back and forth between light and dark areas until I can loosely paint in the shells and small pebbles to be cradled within this tension of value space. It is like breathing in and out with my brush as I step back and forth from the easel, by using my memory and feeling my way into the moment gathering itself up on the canvas.

Detail images reveal clusters of fluid directional brushstrokes.

Detail – ‘Leaving Something Behind’ by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.

They are laid down in rhythms as if washed in and out of existence, not unlike the actions of sea.

Detail – ‘Leaving Something Behind’ by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.

Bits of the red ground still show through and offer a chance to vibrate the energy of the greys, greens and blues in the finished painting.

Detail – ‘Leaving Something Behind’ by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.

My intent is to leave brush marks behind that remind me of the smells, sounds and textures of this moment and this place rather than just visual clues that only represent what our eyes can see.

‘Leaving Something Behind’ by Terrill Welch, 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas.

Artist notes: The seashore was restless. There had been thunder and lightning with heavy rain the night before. It was as if the various weather events had not yet sorted themselves under the morning sun.

Still, no one part of the canvas is meant to be taken in by itself. It is the whole of the work that brings the moment into a full conversation for me. The pauses and stillness is with the re during if the sea rather than patches of flat smooth colour. The drama of the red ground is purposefully tucked underneath to hint at brilliance rather than shout. Does it work? I think so in the sense that it captures what I intended.

SHELLS AT SEA – A LONG WORK ON PAPER PROCESS

Tuesday, 29 April 2025 – Sunday, 4 May 2025

I began a journey of failure and discover working with uncoated paper on Tuesday that end today, Sunday, 4 May 2025. In between and around this process another 48 x 40 inch seafloor walnut oil on canvas of floating shells has been completed. However, for now, let’s stick to my experiment to see if I could make impressions of the shells naturally arranged at the shore by the sea.

Spoiler alert: I went to Reef Bay on Mayne Island with an idea I had been thinking about for weeks and it failed spectacularly! Sometimes creative practice is like this. I salvaged what I could and will have move on by the end of the post.

The tide was low and the empty shells near the shore are slowly being absorbed back into the seafloor. I knew I didn’t have long to try my idea for making impressions of paper of the their shapes along the shore.

I tried uncoated paper I had soaked at home. It just fell apart and stuck to everything like bad toilet paper. I had extra paper with me so I tried starting with dry paper and soaking in with water from a spray bottled. Neither method resulted in making anything but a few dents and tears in the paper.

So I decided to go home and get more paper and charcoal. What I was attempting to do with poor results was to find an environmentally safe way to make an impression of the seafloor to capture its natural state in a new way. I thought the estampage process used to take impressions of writing on ancient stones might work. It didn’t or at least, I hadn’t figured out a way yet.

Next I try some rubbings of shells. It wasn’t anymore successful. On a whim, I drew around the outside edges of a few shells. This tickled something of a possibility but I was out of time I could use in the field for today. The long necked gadget is to hold my phone camera for video recording. Though I have no use for them at the moment, I have filed these video clips away for future consideration.

I gathered up a very few shells and a rock to take with me back to the studio. In my care for this place, I will return these beach items soon but I want to see if I can push this notion of outlines and rubbings a bit further in the studio. I certainly have enough uncoated paper with its blue-white hue to practice on!

As I was gathering things up I started to play with the phone camera a bit.

With a couple of handfuls of images and videos, I left the beach. I was neither elated nor disappointed. It had been a good time in the field even with unsatisfactory results. I was content rather than supercharged with excitement. Sometimes this is enough.

Collage of images by Terrill Welch from field observations at the end of drawing session.

I lay out the torn and crumpled paper to dry. I have no immediate use for it but couldn’t bear to just through it in the compost wet. Today, I will stack it up for maybe recycling or maybe to set the shells and rock on to rub and trace.

This morning, Sunday, 4 May 2025, surrounded by shells, charcoal, pencils and crayons and our breakfast dishes, I laid out a clean sheet of paper with my sketch book underneath. The dishes could wait but the soft morning light wouldn’t. I traced shells in random patterns then coloured them in. I made cutouts of a mussel shell and glued it down.

I wasn’t satisfied. The mystery of those observations at the shore were still missing. I cut out the drawing in a random shape and glued it to another sheet of paper.

I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was still missing. Then I remembered the sheets of paper I had laid out to dry on Tuesday. I used blue paper clips to hold it in place over the other layers and slowly ripped the paper to reveal parts of the drawing underneath.

The top ravaged and torn paper buckled and hung off the drawing.

I decided to iron the layers. Warm pink-orange light reflecting off of the fir wood ceiling and walls is coming down into the room but we can get an idea of how it looks now that it has been pressed flat and is resting in the tile floor. I signed it.

I feel it is now complete even if I have no idea what I will do with it. I find works on paper hard to store and keep in an archive sense and even more challenging and expensive to frame. This is one of the reasons I seldom dude paper for anything but rough sketches in preparation for painting. But, maybe this will change. Working this way is like having my hands in the dirt of the garden. It is more immediate and tactile somehow than painting. This makes for stronger and fuller memories to use in my painting practice.

“Shells at Sea” by Terrill Welch, 19 x 13 inch charcoal, crayons, uncoated paper with glue and paper collage elements. Sunday, 4 May 2025.

I am fascinated by the dramatic ability of this paper to reflect light. I move the paper work from the kitchen back to the art studio table.

The layers still do not really sit flat but the shadows from the folded back paper please me for their experimental impacts on the drawing underneath.

I will leave it on the table and give it a further think while I write up this post.

This making practice time, the work is as much about progressing through failed attempts as it about the work itself. I never know what might be useful in the future. However, I have come to understand that no efforts are wasted. It is now 2:00 pm on this Sunday afternoon and the breakfast dishes have waited for me. Gallery guests came and went before I could get out of my pyjamas to greet them. The gallery is walk in self-browsing so my greetings are not mandatory. I just like to do it if I can. David is up from his midday nap. The bedding needs to be put in the laundry and I still need to have a shower. That said, nothing has been permanently damaged from having disappeared into yet another creative idea.

Seafloor Study within Time and Space

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Tuesday, 10 November 2026

Now having completed the first Unit, “Research and Practice”, I begin the second of three units about “Contextual Perspectives”. This is a long post but definitely sets the direction for the next six months of studies.

Thursday, 11 April 2025

I was walking through the seaside trails the other day and thinking about how I came to be studying the seafloor. I didn’t just wake up on day and decide that seaweed, seashells and ‘landscape of the small’ would be the most amazing subject for painting. I could have maybe but I didn’t. Instead, it was an evolution of observation and restrictions that has brought me to this place. Let’s go through the day and see if we can learn more through reflection as I walk, live and explore.

I have always liked to photograph the spring and summer wild flowers. Today I cam across my first Calypso Orchids on the Saint John Point trails.

My close encounter with a the delicate Calypso orchids, Wednesday, 9 April 2025. What an early Spring beauty!

They are worth a close study both for their delicate structure and beautiful scent.

Single Calypso Orchid.

I have yet to paint these wildflowers. Maybe someday.

The arbutus trees out on the point is another story. They have come under my brush many times. When I walk among them, these works often map onto what I am seeing. Here is just one example.

‘Arbutus Grove West’ by Terrill Welch, 2020, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 x 1.5 in (40.64 x 50.8 x 3.81 cm).

Other times I notice a composition I had ‘t considered before. I ask myself, what might I beat.e to do with this?

The hike is only a little over 4 km long but by the time I amble over the uneven ground along the cliffs sitting and observing now and again, it generally takes me about 2 hours. On this day, I had my eye out for as many wildflowers as I could find. Down over the steep cliff side were sedum growing in locations where the deer couldn’t reach them. Hence, neither could I.

However, I did find some between the rocks that were safely within my reach.

Broad-leaved Stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium) These will soon have vibrant yellow flower spikes.

The trail is not really the same each visit as the light is unique offering distinct formation to be pronounced in the landscape.


I continue on until I spot two more patches of small wildflowers.

Erodium cicutarium or common name Redstem Stork’s-Bill


Erythranthe alsinoides is a species of monkeyflower known by the common names wingstem monkeyflower and chickweed monkeyflower. It is native to western North America from British Columbia to the Klamath Mountains of far northern California, where it grows in moist and wet wooded habitat, such as moss beds and rocky stream banks.

Then finally a perfect yellow beauty that we all know…

Common Dandelion

You might be thinking, yes but what does this have to do with my study fi the seafloor? I wondered the same and have come to the conclusion that just as I observe both the landscape and the forest floor, it would make sense that eventually I would observe the seafloor as well as the seascape and shoreline.

I came home and made us current and orange scone biscuits.

These were served still warm with cheese and strawberries.

My stepson has been visiting and was staying with my husband so I could be gone for longer than I was usually comfortable leaving him alone these days. A special lunch seemed like a nice token of thank you.

It might seem odd to add in the making of lunch to my post about my creative practice but it is somehow thoroughly embedded as part of a complete representation of how I live and work with the best moment, the best materials and the best ingredients I am able to gather and experience. Making lunch is part of living purposefully in a considered way during the fullness of my making day.

I am still puzzling about how I came to be interested in the seafloor and asked my husband if he wants to come out to Reef Bay with me for a while. He was game and trundled his outside walker to the car in record speed. Reef Bay is ideal for us because I can drive right up to the edge of the beach where he can then stay in the car and still see what is going on and keep an eye on me as I clamber around on the sandstone reefs. The tide is still quite a way out but on its way in and the sea is still.

I start by gathering a few ‘child’s view’ photographic sketches of shells.

It is my way of warming up and settling into the moment.

Shapes and colours seem to frame themselves freely behind the lenses of my iPhone.

But then I begin to get lower yet and frame up a ‘landscape of the small’ that offers more contextual environment to the shells.

This reminds of the first painting I have done for the second Unit which as yet it be fully documented in my art journal.

Leaving Something Behind by Terrill Welch 12 x 10 inch walnut oil on canvas, Thursday, 27 March 2025.

Artist notes: The seashore was restless. There had been thunder and lightning with heavy rain the night before. It was as if the various weather events had not yet sorted themselves under the morning sun.


The top of the main reef has dried in the wind and sun that after a few Spring days clears it of slippery seaweed. I walk out as far as I can.

It is not far as we can see when I turn back towards the shore.

I gather photographic sketches of shells and seaweed in various small environments on both my way out and back.

An old oyster shell caught under the incoming tide.

Another oyster is a little farther below the surface of the sea in the cracks between the rocks.

These feel like half finished abstract works to me. I am not sure I can bring anything more to them with paint. Yet, they somehow record information that feels important even if it is never used directly.

I find that it is significant to capture this quieter process of sea and shore meeting… more of a slow caress than a heartbeat and breath rhythm of rolling waves.

Then I spot this cluster of shells floating in an immediately enthralling composition. This I can see putting to paint on a canvas! I have seen these before but never so visually and sensory complete and, most importantly, I can get close enough to document my discovery.

I have been working for months to capture something like this! Ta-da! It will be such a pleasure to unravel the mysteries of these shapes and the movement of the sea around the forms of the shells. This I can do something with!

I continue on, enjoying the colours do the limpid shells.

I notice layers and patterns of sandstone and sea with the rising tide.

Another old oyster shell captures briefly my attention.

However, I am still remembering that cluster of floating shells and thinking about what size of canvas I should use to paint it, maybe large so I can keep it longer.

Going back to my original question about how I have come to study and paint the seafloor, I have tentative answers. Since 2020, I have been required to stay close to home. First, because of the pandemic and second, because of my husband’s health. I deliberately decided early on to focus on what I can do rather than what is temporarily not easily possible. If I wasn’t going to be able to travel to paint then I was going to need to learn how to thrive in place. I challenged myself to go deeper rather than further. To this end, in late 2021 until near the end of 2023 I painted a series called ‘Thriving in Place’ that can be viewed at:

https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/collection/thriving-in-place

These physical restrictions in my life and meeting them with a thriving challenge has resulted in learning and living on the land beside the sea in new ways with an even greater appreciation. In hindsight, it seems obvious that I would eventually tackle painting the seafloor rather than just the seascape. What I have come to understand over these past few years is that deep learning and observation is as limitless and endless as travelling and gathering a breadth of understanding. In the end, thee is no great mystery to unveil in my decision to study the seafloor. Rather, it is a continuation of painting expression that captures my regard and respect for our earthly existence.

Investigating Shape in Landscapes of the Small through Three Acrylic Studies

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Monday, 2 November 2026

Following is the final post I am sharing in my first unit of the 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. 

Reference list:

Plato and Jowett, B. (1994). The Republic. [online] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/150/150.txt. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/150/pg150-images.html [Accessed 5 Jan. 2025].

Rudd, A. (2022). Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter. [online] Oxford University Press eBooks. Oxford University Press. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192856289.001.0001.

SEASHELLS AFTERNOON PAINTING PROCESS

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Friday, 30 October 2026

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: 

  1. The artist as the maker of the painting,
  2. the work itself as a physical object,
  3. the viewer as the person who looks at the painting, and 
  4. 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.

https://www.artworkarchive.com/rooms/terrill-welch/0baa50

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.

Reference list:

Canvy (2025). Canvy. [online] Canvy. Available at: https://canvy.com [Accessed 11 Feb. 2025].

Maslova-Levin, E. and Welch, T. (2018). Conversations on Edge . [online] Abebooks.com. Available at: https://www.abebooks.com/9781986742214/Conversations-Edge-Maslova-Levin-Elena-Welch-1986742210/plp [Accessed 9 Feb. 2025].

Rudd, A. (2022). Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter. [online] Oxford University Press eBooks. Oxford University Press. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192856289.001.0001.

Welch, T. (2025). Seashells Afternoon Painting Process by Terrill Welch. [online] Youtu.be. Available at: https://youtu.be/ai_yr3lgyKk?si=h9IlQoQj6d0csmb5 [Accessed 11 Feb. 2025].

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.

Self and Nature – my most enduring continuous relationship

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Wednesday, 28 October 2026

This first journal entry is the first link to what eventually becomes the strongest position in my nature-centric, reparative painting practice. The second journal entry assists in unpacking the theoretical importance of paintings.

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

January 28, 2025

For two days I have sat with my large sketch book and mapped out my contextual study in a way that likely will only make sense to me. However, as I draft and redraft and write again about what theories, research apply most to my artwork and the contextual environments and artistic influences that underpin my painting practice in relation to the project I am committed to working on, this should be useful.


It is not a static map but one that can be added to and subtracted from as needed. Mostly, it is a transitory guide to my current living and breathing painting practice. It is not meant to be finite or definitive or fixed in any aspect. This map might include facts but I do not intend for it to be factual in nature. I am using it more as a sensation or a glimpse out of the corner of our eye where we might see something about me and my painting practice that we never noticed before. I will unpack some of my markers and findings into a 3,000 word contextual study essay and leave the rest as a bit of a personal mystery. I am not so much seeking a truth but rather living a life – the most meaningful life I can possibly learn to live. The most profound finding from doing this exercise is realizing how impactful and enduring my relationship with nature has been and how it remains the strongest and most consistent influence on both my work and life.

Anthony Rudd and Why Paintings Matter

29 January 2025

A few quick notes so I don’t lose them…

I can now admit that I was becoming terribly disappointed with attempting to place my painting practice into a theoretical context that made any definitive sense to me. Plato and his Forms and exemplification of reason and Dōgen and his oneness as a path to enlightenment were only taking me so far. I value the analysis by Carol S. Gould for her astute ability to summarize where these two thinkers intersected and diverged. Yet, it wasn’t yet enough. I still felt like my intellectual feet were floating on air with no perceptible firm ground linking to my painting practice. I read passages of translations of original text about the work of both Plato and Dōgen. That was useful for its own sake but did not move my theoretical framework any closer to my painting practice.

Then I settled down to read Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter by Anthony Rudd, 2022. 

Besides Gould’s article “Dōgen and Plato on Literature and Enlightenment” published in 2009, it seems to be the most promising fit with my current painting practice and provides a promising path forward in my explorations of painting the sea floor as a subject that will instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience; while using the theory and methods of whole body and mind through to ordinary life as presented by John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity published in 2007. 

Rudd’s “claim is that painting matters because it is or can be truthful, that—apart from all the many particular reasons why we might value some particular paintings—good paintings in general are of value because they disclose essential aspects of reality.” (Rudd, 2022, p.9) 

He goes on to say “Paintings make themselves present to us, but in so doing they also make something else—their subject matter—present to us in a way that discursive representations cannot. (I argue that this is true in a sense even of abstract or ‘non-representational’ paintings.)” (Rudd, 2022, p.9)

Rudd goes on “However, if it is to explain the value of painting, the theory needs to explain not only the connection of painting to the True, but also to the Good; it must explain, that is, why the particular kind of knowledge by acquaintance that painting provides is good to have. I argue that it can only do this if what painting discloses—the essences of things, the order of nature—is itself good. But this is, in fact, what we experience, not only indirectly through painting, but directly in the aesthetic appreciation of nature itself. To experience nature aesthetically is to experience it as being valuable, as having an ontological goodness—however problematic it may be to relate this to a notion of moral goodness. So—as seems right if we are to answer Plato’s critique—the Beautiful (i.e. positive aesthetic value), the True, and the Good must all come together. Painting cannot be of value unless it is a response to the real value of the broader order of things. So an adequate account of the value of painting—and of the aesthetic appreciation of nature—requires us to repudiate the modern picture of a ‘disenchanted’ value-free world. In the final chapters I consider whether or in what way this ‘re-enchantment of the world’ can be considered to be religious in character. In so far as it can, then the icon is exemplary for painting in general not only in a weak sense (there is a structural parallel between the way an icon makes a saint present and the way in which any painting makes its subject matter present) but also in a stronger sense—that what all painting discloses is, in a sense, something sacred and that painting itself, therefore, is a sacred, even a quasi-sacramental act.” (Rudd, 2022, p.11)

This is a powerful proposition to unpack and one that resonates not just in the specifics of my painting practice but also with my interest in Monet’s Grande Decoration in the Orangery and Rothko’s Chapel paintings and how they connect to my approach to the sea floor paintings. 

I will stop here for the moment and go back to reading but this gets at the root or core of what I value about painting and why I find it important as a means of conversation or communication between nature, myself as painting and to the close disclosure of the painting to the viewer. 

Reference list:

Gould, C. (2009) DŌGEN AND PLATO ON LITERATURE AND ENLIGHTENMENT 1, Florida International University, Asian Studies, Japan Studies Review, Volume XIII, pp. 169–185. Available at: https://asian.fiu.edu/jsr/gould-dogen-and-plato-p169.pdf (Accessed: 5 January 2025).

Loori, John Daido (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Rudd, A. (2022) Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter, Oxford University Press eBooks. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192856289.001.0001.

New Work – Seashells Midday at Reef Bay

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Tuesday, 27 October 2026

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! 

A Long Land and Sea Story Painting

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Sunday, 18 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

December 31, 2024

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.

Research about another artist who broke bone china – Dana Claxton 1997 Buffalo Bone China https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china

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. 

Reference: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307529251_Intertidal_resource_use_over_millennia_enhances_forest_productivity

Soft Acrylic Gel Medium 

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.

Reference list:

Claxton, D. (1997 [-2018]) Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton. Available at: https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 6 December 2024).

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.

Seafloor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch

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Saturday, 17 October 2026

Much of this early research was set aside but some strands were pulled through to the end so I want to keep it here for future reference.

Monday, 30 December 2024

Full text and reference list for: Seafloor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch

Welcome! I am Terrill Welch. 

In my Sea Floor painting series, I will practice the Zen theory of seeing with the whole body and mind and moving through this awareness to be able to function in the ordinariness of our lives as discussed by John Daido Loori in 2004.

I also consider that art theory, as described by Cynthia Freeland, “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.”  (Freeland, 2003)

In addition, in the words of bell hooks “… I find writing – theoretical talk – to be most meaningful that which invites readers to engage in critical reflection and to engage in the practice…” in her case “of feminism.” (hooks, 1991, p. 8) 

Though hooks is talking about writing and readers, I suggest that the same principle can apply to art theory being most meaningful when viewers are invited to engage in critical reflection and to engage in/with the practice of making art. 

I propose that art theory is embedded in our making practice and lived experiences where one continuously revises and informs the other. 

The purpose of my Seafloor series is to engage in an intimate conversation between land and sea and the art of painting with the intent that development and completion of a work will instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience. However, this is not an isolated new beginning.

As a white, rural, post secondary educated mid sixties woman of settler ancestry living on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People along the southwest coast of Canada, I was born after the 1940’s and 50’s American Abstract Expressionism movement which included the likes of Mark Rothko and before the gestural figurative and gauging work of Canadian painter Patterson Ewen in the 60’s and 80’s, which has then led me to the thrill of performance art such as the significant contemporary work of Joan Jonas and Dana Claxton and their powerful installation art. Through all of this, I have remained a practicing painter for the past 50 years with primarily figurative, semi-figurative, semi-abstract and impressionist leanings.

I can and do experiment with painting fully abstractly. However, the process and the results seem incomplete to me for the conversations I wish to have with my subjects in paint. Both figurative and abstract elements in my paintings are imperative to the depth, movement and full expression I want to create in my work. 

With this context in mind, I propose that positioning figurative versus abstract in contemporary art is possibly a false dichotomy. I suggest that in my painting practice for this series, figurative and abstract painting are on the same continuum and have an elastic tension between whole body and mind awareness and the functionality required within our ordinary lives. 

This both/and approach to figurative/abstract painting has strong historical beginnings with French painter Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) through to American painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993) and Canadian painter Patterson Ewen (1925 – 2002) to those referenced in 2021 by Julian Delarange in contemporary art such as David Hockney (1937 -) , Gerhard Richter (1932 – ), Alex Katz (1927 – ) and the youngest at 65 years old, Peter Doig (1959 -).

In 2023, Camille Cohen continues to explore why figurative art has maintained its relevance through time citing the iconic work of Frida Kalho (1907 – 1954) and the figurative abstractions of Cecily Brown (1969 – ). (Cohen, 2023)

However, there are risks within this making approach. As Loori cautions, once we name something, by giving it figurative meaning, we risk no longer noticing how what we have named is perpetually changing. (p. 73 Loori, 2004) We risk missing what else our subject is and what it might yet become. 

I address this risk by beginning again and again, breath by breath, brushstroke by brushstroke through to the quivering notion of naming before it is named – leaving room in each painting for future possibilities and discoveries. 

Video publicly available to view on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LOOo6ipMBcg?si=koFBO4x6UMfu9MfH


Reference list

Claxton, D. (1997) Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton. Available at: https://www.danaclaxton.com/artwork/buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 6 December 2024).

Cohen, C. (2023) What is Figurative Art ? A comprehensive guide, COHLE GALLERY. Available at: https://www.cohlegallery.com/blogs/stories/what-is-figurative-art (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Delagrange, J. (2021) Contemporary Figurative Painting: A Complete Overview – CAI, Contemporary Art Issue. Available at: https://www.contemporaryartissue.com/contemporary-figurative-painting-a-complete-overview-and-list/ (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Diebenkorn, R. (1957) Sea Wall [Oil on Canvas]. Available at: https://diebenkorn.org/objects/220/?group=52ae518792775b11d5b4a4cddb7f6f80 (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Drouin-Brisebois, J. and Diviney, D. (2024) JOAN JONAS: WE COME FROM THE SEA, Gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Available at: https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/your-collection/joan-jonas-we-come-from-the-sea (Accessed: 20 December 2024).

Ewen, P. (1983) Ice Floes at Resolute Bay [acrylic on gouged plywood].

Freeland, C. (2003) Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192804631.001.0001.

Griffin, K. (2018) ART SEEN: Only British bone china allowed for Buffalo Bone China, vancouversun. Vancouver Sun. Available at: https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/art-seen-only-british-bone-china-allowed-for-buffalo-bone-china (Accessed: 21 December 2024).

Hatch, J.G. (2018) Paterson Ewen: Life & Work, Art Canada Institute – Institut de l’art canadien. Available at: https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/paterson-ewen/biography/ (Accessed: 13 November 2024).

hooks, bell (1991) Theory as Liberatory Practice bell hooks. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 2., pp. 1–12. Available at: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Crisis-and-Critique-2018-19/hooks_theory.pdf.

Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5367 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

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).

Loori, John Daido (2007) The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Lynk, M. (2024) ‘We come from the sea’: American artist Joan Jonas on the pull of oceans and Cape Breton, CBC. Ideas in the Afternoon, Radio One. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artist-joan-jonas-cape-breton-and-oceans-1.7358491 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Meiers, A. (2020) How the Rothko Chapel Creates Spiritual Space, JSTOR Daily. Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-rothko-chapel-creates-spiritual-space/ (Accessed: 30 October 2024).

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.

Welch, T. (2022a) Future Fragments Study [acrylic and oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/future-fragments-study (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2022b) Sandstone Serpents at the Entrance of Active Pass [acrylic and pencil crayon on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sandstone-serpents-at-the-entrance-of-active-pass (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024a) A Long Land and Sea Story [acrylic, walnut oil and bone china on wood].

Welch, T. (2024b) Drifting with Seashells in a Receding Tide [digital sketch using Art Set App].

Welch, T. (2024c) Late August Morning [oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/late-august-morning (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024d) Rhythms on the Sea Floor with Crab [acrylic on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/rhythms-on-the-sea-floor-with-crab (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024e) Sea and Seals [oil, ceramic tiles, screws and wire on wood]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sea-and-seals (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024f) Sea Floor at Reef Bay [walnut oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/sea-floor-at-reef-bay (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024g) Sea Floor, Research, Theory and Practice presentation by Terrill Welch, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/LOOo6ipMBcg?si=6a_eNxmBZWSAjdKi (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024h) Shells Gathering Study [walnut oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/shells-gathering-study (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024i) Strait of Georgia Blues [walnut oil on gessobord]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/strait-of-georgia-blues (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Welch, T. (2024j) Varnish Clamshell in the Flow [walnut oil on linen]. Available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/varnish-clamshell-in-the-flow (Accessed: 30 December 2024).

Rough capture of research considerations

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

I am beginning to muse about research considerations.

Do I restrict geographic site or sites for my field work?

Are there other materials and ways of engagement other than paint and a surface that are compelling to me when having a conversation with nature?

How does being with nature, specifically the sea instil inner peace, wellbeing and resilience.

What marks or rhythms of marks and shapes on a painting surface convey inner peace, wellbeing and resilience?

Action: Must investigate theories and research – My biases are that these aspects of self engagement, realizations or vibration achieved by both the maker of the work and the viewer of the same work allows for the best opportunity for living a full, rich life with compassion, accountability,  and endurance. I question whether this is true or simply long held assumptions.

Now to get on with some painting in the studio. It is only 9:30 and I should be able to get a couple of hours in at least. Then we have the “Making Day” tomorrow for school. This should make for a nice warm up for then.

Latest small work of a varnish clamshell in a seasonal stream at the tide line

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

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!

Working in the Unknown at the Edge of Knowing

/ Terrill Welch / Leave a comment

Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Excerpts from Terrill Welch MA Fine Art Journal

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.

References:

Lynk, M. (2024) ‘We come from the sea’: American artist Joan Jonas on the pull of oceans and Cape Breton, CBC. Ideas in the Afternoon, Radio One. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artist-joan-jonas-cape-breton-and-oceans-1.7358491 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning (2024) The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5367 (Accessed: 19 November 2024).

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.