Sitting

June 22, 2010June 22, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

loft from sitting on meditation cushion

Last night’s a summer solstice labyrinth walk is slipping into the soft dust of yesterday. Today I have a list. It is a long list of tasks that must be accomplished today, this week and next. Some are routine commitments, like typing up the minutes for a meeting. Others are unique and one-time requests, like painting signs for a wedding on recycled wood so that the 120, or so, guests can find their way around a large venue. Nowhere on this list does it say “put brush in hand and do the underpainting for next painting.”

My first response to this creative dilemma was to sleep until twenty-to-eight this morning. Now, my body feels like it has been pretzel-wrapped and would rather break than unfurl. My mind is grumpy. With puffy, blinking eyes I look out the window and see that the sun is already settling on the valley floor. Grudgingly I note “at least there is sun.” Then I remember “oh yeah, I have a blog to write too… and that package needs to be mailed this mornings as well.”

What is a creative woman in service to creativity and its inspired Creative Potager community to do?

# one – get out of bed and gently untangle limbs and brain… at first hobbling and then gathering some form of jerky tempo on a trip to the washroom. Nothing can be formulated until this task is accomplished.

#two – heat teakettle, hand-grind blend of organic coffee and fill stainless steel insulated coffee press as body and brain cells begin to stretch and fall over each other to gain a more positive outlook on the day. In a moment of stubbornness I ignore them.

#three – climb the wood stairs up to the loft with coffee pot and cup. Place both by laptop for later as I glance longingly at the blank canvas on the easel.

#four – return to the top of the stairs and move past its invitation to decline and go over to the other side of the loft where its high ceiling lets light caress the small space.

#five – bow to the cushion on the floor.

#six – SIT

#seven – go back to desk and add “paint underpainting” to list with an asterisk… which denotes a very important “to do”

I am smiling. All my grumpy stubborn resistance has evaporated like morning dew. Now the day can begin. Among other things, I have a painting to paint!

Not everyone has a formal “sitting practice” such as meditation but most us will sit quietly, informally resting, gathering and sorting mentally, physically and spiritually. In these moments of simply being we can gather direction.

Sprout Question: When has simply sitting been your creative response?

p.s. this is not the blog I intended to write this morning but the goddesses of blog writing had their own ideas… what can I say? Have a most wonderful Tuesday:)

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Winter Sun Oil Painting

May 11, 2010August 21, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 18 Comments

There is something about the late dawn of winter sun, a bruised heaviness that seeps across the sky. I started this painting thinking it might be abstract and lighter, maybe even cheerful, but my subconscious seems to know where to take the brush. Though the quick marks of paint give impressions rather than detail… it is clearly not an abstract painting. And though colourful, I am not sure it is cheerful. In fact, I’m sure this painting is deeply melancholy with bittersweet recognition that the sun is rising… lifting, lifting, lifting us into another, and possibly, better day.

I started by brushing water (it would have been spirits but I’m using water miscible oils) and linseed oil onto the canvas. Then I began adding colour, an underpainting of sorts…

I never let it completely dry but kept working the paint into the canvas as I added more colour.

Using a good sized brush (10) I swished the sky and clouds on and softened them with a cloth and feathery brush. Then I flipped the rocks and sea loosely into place and left them like that.

I came back yesterday and tidied up a bit … as I listened to kd lang’s performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame induction of Leonard Cohen in 2006.

You might want to do that too as you take in “Winter Sun”

18X24″ by 1 3/4″ water miscible oil painting on 100% natural cotton canvas

There are a few more small edits which I will make and then replace this last image, but it is close enough to complete to share with you.

Sprout Question: What has been your latest personal discovery through your creativity?

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

The Question of Who

March 26, 2010March 28, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 24 Comments

The sea snatches at sandstone mounds as gulls plead their case with the winds – which am I, sea, sandstone, gull or wind?

View and purchase full resolution image here.

Early morning – Flexible and Flowing… one of 64 cards drawn for today.

I can say more but this feels just right.

Sprout Question: Does the question of who come up in your creativity?

Have a wonderful weekend.

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Practice of a little each day

March 25, 2010March 26, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 14 Comments

I express my creativity in various forms. The main three expressions are photography, painting and writing. Monday through Friday I provide a blog post on Creative Potager with a sprout question designed to help us take our creativity further. I have been noticing a thread or theme coming up in both my life and in our sprout responses. The thread is like a strawberry plant sending runners out in all direction seeking fertile soil. Since I like strawberries and I like sprout responses on Creative Potager, I thought I would provide some rich ground to expand on what I call “the practice of a little each day.”

This practice has been part of my life for a very long time and harkens back to the work of William Glasser, and choice theory and reality therapy (which I took both the basic and intensive training in the 1980’s). Today this work also seems to have sprouted up as part of coaching and brief therapy but its roots are also identifiable yoga, mediation and other eastern practices. Now that, for recognition and reference, I have identified my personal lineage to the practice let’s get on with fertilizing these Creative Potager creative runners with “the practice of a little each day.”

View and purchase full resolution image here.

What is “the practice of a little each day?”

1. Each morning listen deeply to what your creative need is for that day (different from your wants or desires needs are like the basic needs of the air and water for our creativity to survive).

2. Make a commitment and a concrete specific plan to action you are going to take to fulfill that need just little before the end of the day. No excuses, no judging. Gently and firmly ask yourself these questions “Is what I am committing doable? Is what I am doing now working for me? If yes, how can I keep doing it? If no, what will work better?”

The key to this practice is clarity about your long-term creative intention and doing “a little each day” which is something I call a living vision. In this case, a living vision for expressing your creativity.

View and purchase full resolution image here.

The practice is simple in design and takes a life time to appreciate – it is a practice. We can start again each day – or even each hour if need be. Please take from it what works for you and let go of the rest.

Sprout Question: How does “the practice of a little each day” inform your creativity?

Note: Today includes some of my more meditative images that support my own deep listening. The first one is currently the background on my laptop.

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Shadow Memories

March 9, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 20 Comments

Shuffling the source material for my new book Mona’s Work, I’m having difficulty deciding what story to write next. It is not the material that is difficult. The bits of paper, the scribbler and the recipe book are all straight forward. It is the shadow memories.

The memories I want for the book are also connected to ones I would rather not revisit. Is this why I have been working on Mona’s Work since 2007 with only a slim volume of stories to show for my efforts? I have seen enough therapists, made my way through enough healing circles and drawn enough pictures about these experiences to feel the work I need to do is done. I wish not to haunt my readers with these stories as it seems unnecessary. The memories are not related to the same people, or the same places just the same time in my life.

I’m determined that these shadow stories not become part of the final cut but will I need to write them anyway – so that I can mine deeper into the my memory for the stories I do want to retrieve? Or can I just note them and place the memory on a “parking lot list” such as I use when facilitating so that groups do not derail? Items placed on a parking lot list are revisited at the end of a process to see if there is anything that must be done with them. They are seen as valuable in the first instance – just not part of the immediate work. They are placed in the parking lot so as not to be lost (as if that is ever going to happen). Can I do this with the shadow memories? Or should I write through the memories, allowing the darkness in behind the bright colours of Mona’s Work?

I wonder if, as in the image below of “city morning in spring,” I can find the balance and beauty of my shadow memories – as is evident in the buildings showing their shadowy bulk behind the trees illuminated in the morning sun.

View and purchase full resolution image here.

Sprout Question: How do your shadows impact or influence your creative process?

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

East

February 25, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 8 Comments

Quietly I close the door behind me and step out onto the sandstone walk. Dawn requests softness as my body, stiff from sleep, stretches into the morning.

East is the direction of the door I’ve just closed. East is the direction my head faces when I sleep. East is the first direction I seek when I rise. Where am I? I look east. East is the direction my studio window faces. When I work, I mostly keep east in front of me or to my left shoulder. I write, take photographs and paint mostly during the first few hours of a day. I edit in the afternoon and late evening. Sunsets, the gloaming and dinner are for enjoying and chats – not working.

I admire the sparse early garden as I head out for a walk.

View and purchase full resolution image (photograph rendered in oils) here.

If we are able to follow the natural rhythms of our body, they are often different from each other. Not everyone has the same orientation to the various times of day.

Sprout Question: Following your natural body rhythms, what part of the day is yours?

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

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

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

Solitude

February 5, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 12 Comments

Home is my place of solitude and sanctuary. There needs to be an easy transition from outside/inside living. We have almost the same amount of covered deck space as we do inside space with fir trees providing the boundary of our daily living rather than the walls of our home. To flourish my creativity needs extended amounts of time with just me – in solitude, daily. For me, this kind of outside/inside space is the most inspiring solitude.