Magnolias and the Galloping Art Work

April 8, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 20 Comments

Magnolias how varied and lovely are your blooms. Some as white as white

and others so pink as to be purple.

Small shrubs or large trees and star or plump petals you are always special to me.

Magnolias, may you give me courage to share the predicament of the art work which is galloping out of the studio as shown in today’s Terrill Welch Artist website post “More Canadian Landscape Paintings by Terrill Welch SOLD!” Four more oil paintings and a medium-size fine art photography print to be exact. This brings the total to eight paintings and three photography prints sold since the middle of January. It may not sound like much but it represents several thousands of dollars of art work going off to new homes.

I was asked by a dinner guest on the weekend how it felt to have my work meet with such success. I replied with a raised eyebrow and a soft shrug. You see, it is really not particularly comfortable to be in the lime light of my selling art work. Rather than being a comfort, I instead, feel a sense of panic and almost anxiety. Over the years, I haven’t been able to nail what this is about but definitely recognized the repeating result of the experience. I finally replied to my guest that it must be like other artistic expressions. Once a song is released or a book published or a painting sold it often feels like an ending rather than a beginning for the creator. There is an irrational fear that it is the last “good” one and that there will be no more. Silly I know. However, I can attest to the actuality of this emotion. Since I have been selling my art work from the time I was fourteen years old, I wish I could say it is getting easier over time but this is not so. Thankfully, the feeling only lasts until the next painting is off the easel or the next photography print is made available for purchase. Balance and clarity is then restored until the next sale. Odd isn’t it?

Well, let’s get started with balance…

Study in White Star Magnolia

(Image available for detailed viewing and purchase HERE)

If you are comfortable sharing, what quirky anxiety accompanies your creative success?

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Finding the Rhythm of the Sea in oil on canvas in the art studio (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Contemporary Canadian Landscape paintings by Terrill Welch SOLD! (terrillwelchartist.com)
West Coast Blues in photography and painting (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
The Story of the Swamp Lantern (creativepotager.wordpress.com)

The Story of the Swamp Lantern

April 1, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 12 Comments

Swamp lantern is a beautiful name for our wild western skunk cabbage or Lysichiton americanus. My first experience with this smelly beauty was when I was five years old and I was walking with my mother in the early evening along a logging skid trail.

We were living in our small portable bunk house right on the edge of the logging landing where the cats skidded the logs in and the loaders loaded them up on the logging trucks for their long trip from the middle-of-no-where in Cariboo country British Columbia to the sawmill in Williams Lake. The close proximity to the working logging area meant that we had to stay inside the small two room cabin on skids during working hours. How my mother did this with two young children and a baby I can’t even begin to image.

My mother loved to be outside as much as we did so when the whistle blew and the last machine shut down we were out the door and walking the nearest skid trail that went through the swamp area behind the landing and then beyond. In the low light of the heavily treed forest, infused with dank freshly turned earth, next to the pungent swamp, is where I encountered my first swamp lantern. Gorgeous!

The blossom petals are an unbelievably bright, almost opaque yellow accompanied by cabbage-like exotic tropical foliage. Each plant also has a distinctively phallic stamen that is somehow unavoidable more pronounced in any compositional photograph than when in the presence of the plant itself. However, all in all, this is a most beautiful native announcement of early spring. But after these beauties have been blooming for a while – the smell! Once it has traveled up your nasal passages, you will never, ever forget – skunk cabbage!

Our western variety is not good to eat because as it contains calcium oxalate crystals which would be much like eating crushed glass. This caution does not apply if you are a bear. The swamp lantern or skunk cabbage is an important part of bear’s spring laxative tonic when it come out of hibernation.

The plants large, waxy leaves were important to indigenous people for food preparation and storage. They were commonly used to line berry baskets and to wrap around whole salmon and other foods when baked under a fire. It is also used to cure sores and swelling.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysichiton_americanus

What wild spring flowers are powerful connections to one of your childhood memories?

P.S. Three more paintings have sold over the weekend but I will tell you more about this in another post soon. All the best of Easter Monday to you!

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

First Spring Flowers – Terry Thormin (vancouverislandnature.wordpress.com)
Spring: In many places, it’s earlier than ever (blogs.seattletimes.com)

Finding the Rhythm of the Sea in oil on canvas in the art studio

March 25, 2013March 25, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 14 Comments

Painting en plein air is wonderful and the easiest way to feel your landscape through the paintbrush and onto the canvas. However, weather and the size of the a work does not always make this the most practical approach. So I photograph my subjects from various perspectives. Then using sometimes years of memory about a subject along with a series of reference images, I am then prepared to work on a specific landscape in my small studio. This canvas is a good size at 20 x 40 inches. Finished paintings and blank canvases are going to have to squeeze in their edges and squish together to make room for this fellow.

While I am getting the set up and the painting roughed in I thought I would answer a question for you. I am often asked about how I get my ideas for my photographs and paintings. The most honest answer is that the ideas find me as I observe my everyday life. I capture and paint what I notice, what I see, feel, smell and hear. I am influenced by events that are happening in my life. If I am mournful, excited or weary it will show up in what I notice. What is most relevant is my daily practice of noticing. The ideas are always there. My primary task is to notice and to act on what I notice. Today’s work comes from a moment in September a few years ago when the sea rolled itself with eloquent expression onto the shore at Edith Point. Let’s rough it in and see what we have.

You may notice that I do not sketch my work onto the canvas. This is something I have never done as I prefer to make some basic marks with paint and then paint up an underpainting to guide me. Sometimes this underpainting is a complementary colour. Other times, such as this one, I stay close to the palette that will become the finished painting.

Much of the scene is in a late afternoon shadow, and the haze is heavy from the smoke of forest fires. The rhythm of the sea and the simplicity of the moment is so strong that my brush seems to know the path by heart. Hours pass with nothing but my humming and the sound of the palette knife mixing paint and the brush applying it to the canvas. The light is past its prime in the studio. I need some distance. Shall we carefully take the wet thing outside and have a look?

It is coming I think, but will have to sit until tomorrow now. My body is stiff and a bit tired from standing and reaching most of the day, but it feels good. I have intimately noticed the rhythm of the sea.

I want to continue to work wet-on-wet or alla prima on this canvas so I begin again the next afternoon and work with the studio lights until very late into the evening. Finally, the painting comes to rest.

Resting is an observable and intuitive state of a painting’s development. It is when the elements of the painting have found their place on the canvas in relationship to each other. Yet, they are still alive with energy and vitality. In this case, the sea is still rolling forward onto the shore. The trees are still tingling from the days sun. The rocks are releasing their summer heat as the water charges across their surface. I am there. You are there. The salt spray is moist on our skin and the rhythm of the sea matches our breath, our heartbeat, and answers a call to all that is knowable.

The resting period is also a time to critically view the painting with fresh eyes. Is there anything odd or irritating that can be corrected? Is there anything that can strengthen the expression of the piece? Does the painting work? Is it finished? This process of evaluation can happen in a minute or it may take weeks. For this painting I left it for seven days while I was away. I came home and looked at it and decided it is done, finished. A final photograph is required and then it will be released over at Terrill Welch Artist later in the week.

First, I must get a new show ready to hang at the Green House Restaurant here on Mayne Island. Here is a short video from my home studio sharing sneak preview of the 18 paintings that will be shown…

Well, that is it for a week in the life of this artist.

What does a week in the life of your creativity include?

I so much look forward to hearing from you.

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Contemporary Canadian Landscape paintings by Terrill Welch SOLD! (terrillwelchartist.com)
West Coast Blues in photography and painting (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Artist Studio in real time (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Sliced with a Tear – a large autumn Canadian landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Wanted alive not perfect – still life painting with Paul Cézanne (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Plein Air Affair honors longtime Hofwyl-Broadfield trustee (jacksonville.com)

West Coast Blues in photography and painting

March 6, 2013December 22, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

Yes, my yes! We do have sun! I am always fascinated how our west coast blues means a bright sunny day to me and yet often other will comment that it looks rather cold 🙂

Of course it is a bit brisk for sure but not cold. I am wearing only a sweater as I press myself as close to the water as possible…

(Image is available in my Redbubble storefront HERE)

Ah the Salish Sea and our west coast blues. Oyster Bay on Mayne Island has never been more compelling. I love how these moments so easily connect land, sea and sky as one. What a morning!

Of course the very next day… I just had to take out my brushes. It was something that just must be done!

WEST COAST BLUES study 12 x 16 inch oil on canvas

In less than 24 hours after this painting study was completed it has been sold. It never made it to being posted in its work-in-progress “resting” state on my Creative Potager blog. Nor did it make it to being posted as “released” on my Terrill Welch Artist website. The buyer scooped it up from its post on Facebook yesterday. Still to wet to move, its new home is waiting for its eventual arrival. This kind of early sale of a still-wet oil painting seems to be happening more frequently than one might expect.

What do these early sales of wet paintings mean for buyers and collectors watching and waiting for “their painting” to come off of my easel?

My advice would be to make an offer as soon as you are sure about a painting. But even if a painting disappears before you get the chance to make an offer, have faith that, in time, I shall paint another you will find suitable. Or a buyer can commission a size and subject matter for a painting that they would like. Because of my painting style and my general character, I do not do specific commissions where the end result is predetermined by the buyer. Canvas size and subject are about as far as I can commit.

The other stickler that sometimes keeps buyers waiting until after the painting they would like has sold is of course – money. Even my smaller studies are pricy and are due to increase in price again by the end of the month. However, for buyers where there is some level of mutual trust, I can do a lay-away purchase option where the painting is purchased in three equal payments (or by some other agreeable payment plan) and is then delivered to the buyer when the last payment has been received. As a full-time artist and photographer, this option has always been a win-win for both me and the purchaser. If I have a few sales being made by this method, then there is always the known expectation of funds coming in and the paintings are more accessible for purchase by the buyer.

Well, enough about all that! Many thanks to all who enjoy and support my paintings and photography that are mostly of the west coast of Canada.

What creative Blues do you find most inspiring?

P.S. New Featured Oil Paintings are up at Terrill Welch Artists.

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Winter Afternoon West Coast Ferry Home oil painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Sliced with a Tear – a large autumn Canadian landscape painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Evening Thunderclouds over the Strait of Georgia – dramatic seascape sky painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Artist Studio in real time (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Pear Trees in Winter First Light – small oil painting (terrillwelchartist.com)

Wanted alive not perfect – still life painting with Paul Cézanne

February 10, 2013February 11, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 22 Comments

There is an immediacy to painting still life that is even more evident than when painting landscapes. The subjects are closer to the painter and therefore the light moves even quicker when painting alla prima or wet-on-wet then when painting the sea or the forest using the same method. But it is my favourite way to paint and with the west coast being so perpetually grey this winter, I wanted some colour. So colour we shall have!

I grab some available subjects and pulled them together on the kitchen counter and then I snug my old easel up to it. After roughing it a view lines with paint, I am ready to begin.

The newsprint is intended to help keep the subject close to us and to provide additional reflected light and lightness to the composition. In the end, as you will see, I let go of some of this in favor of more depth and warmth. With an afternoon of painting large loose brush strokes of delicate colour, we come to about here.

There is something about a still life for the impressionist painter that brings home the need to render it alive rather than perfect. If in doubt follow the light and colour. This is what I tell myself anyway – render the light and get it alive. It is not my idea but the wise perspective of Paul Cézanne. I set it aside to “rest” and at bedtime it looked something like this.

I mean “something like “because every time I looked at the painting I made an adjustment. While the painting was “resting” I cleanup the still life set up, eat one of the pears and set a blood orange aside for morning. I am not completely happy with the painting yet. There is a lost space on the left that leaves the composition more centered than I would like. I wonder what would Paul Cézanne have to say?

Let’s ask the Web Museum in Paris:

Paul Cézanne, one of the creators of modern art, was called the “solidifier of Impressionism”. And indeed he does not draw his picture before painting it: instead, he creates space and depth of perspective by means of planes of color, which are freely associated and at the same time contrasted and compared. The facets which are thus produced create not just one but many perspectives, and in this way volume comes once again to dominate the composition, no longer a product of the line but rather of the color itself. His still-lifes, in their simplicity and delicate tonal harmony, are a typical work and thus ideal for an understanding of Cézanne’s art.

Most of his pictures are still lifes. These were done in the studio, with simple props; a cloth, some apples, a vase or bowl and, later in his career, plaster sculptures. Cézanne’s still lifes are both traditional and modern. The fruits and objects are readily identifiable, but they have no aroma, no sensual or tactile appeal and no other function other than as passive decorative objects coexisting in the same flat space. They bear no relation to the colorful vegetables of Provence — gorgeous red tomatoes, purple aubergines, and bright green courgettes. In his pursuit of the essence of art, Cézanne had to suppress earthly delights.

(reference: Web Museum Paris at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/sl which includes several images of his still life paintings)

Well, I am not sure I agree that his paintings “have no aroma, sensual or tactile appeal and no other function other than as passive decorative objects coexisting on the same flat space.” However, he did focus on using planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields of viewer recognition. This is what I am after in this painting. But I want to be sure the viewer experiences the life and sustenance of the subject. These bosc pears, sweet lemons and blood oranges are ready for eating. Delicious in fact. How do I get past the idea of decorative? How do I create more weight on the left side of the composition? Ah yes, questions to sleep on.

It is morning. I cut up the blood orange. I look at it. My mind goes into a long pause. I pick up the cutting board with the orange slices still on it and climb the stairs to the studio.

Rightly or wrongly, there are now slices of blood orange slid in beside the rest of the fruit in the painting. Of course, as always, when one things changes in a painting there is the need to change a dozen others. So here it is. Finished. Not perfect but still alive I think.

WINE VASE, PEARS, LEMONS AND BLOOD ORANGES 12 x 16 inch oil on canvas

The still live painting’s softness and colour harmony in this morning’s light pleases me. And do have a slice of blood orange. They are delicious! The painting will be released over at Terrill Welch Artist at some point in the future.

What might you be wanting to render alive not perfect?

All the best of Sunday to you and wishing you a marvelous week ahead!

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Paul Cézanne: founding father of modern art (guardian.co.uk)

Artist Studio in real time

February 3, 2013February 3, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

Today my art studio is feeling and looking like a real mess.

I can see I have paint that has now dried onto my enamel table top. Not very pleasing at all. Nor is the unfinished applications for our expired passport renewals and neither are the stacks of receipts to be sorted for my 2012 tax returns either. However, there are ten completed paintings in my 2013 folder with six still to release. Three paintings have sold already this year and there are enough supplies in the studio to keep going for another few months.

But darn! Every time I think about those pesky administrative tasks, well I just squeeze more paint onto the palette, put another canvas on the easel and turn my back on it for another day. So this week I have made myself a promise. I either do passport applications, sort receipts for the bookkeeper or paint the edges on my big paintings. It is a toss-up which of these three tasks I dislike the most. The outcome is sure to be the ideal result because completing any three of these tasks this week will be a win.

Now, how might I set up the last of my large 60 x 36 inch canvases to do that fir tree painting I have been thinking about? Oh! Yeah. Hum. Must wait until edges, passport and tax files are completed….

The artist’s slumps a few inches closer to the studio floor her face longer than the gray winter day outside the window. Then, squaring her shoulders, she begins cleaning the studio. It is Sunday after all. No one does paper work or painting of edges on Sunday. Do they?

What is your least favourite “must do” task and how do you get it done?

And an ever so slightly more cheerful note, here is one of the newest paintings that is yet to be released.

AT DUSK 10 x 12 inch oil on canvas will be released over at Terrill Welch Artist later this week along with at least a couple more that are also in the completed folder. All paintings that are currently available can be viewed in the Artsy Home online gallery HERE.

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Greetings Fir Tree and Your Simple Goodness – poem by Terrill Welch (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
What happens in an art studio if the painter catches a cold? (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Reef Bay Mayne Island observation to painted experience (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Evening and the Arbutus Tree – a large west coast oil painting (terrillwelchartist.com)
Selling Art (pmontezchronicles.wordpress.com)

New painting Released

January 6, 2013January 6, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 5 Comments

New Painting released today.

Terrill Welch

I remember the sea, and the soft rush of water as it comes ashore. I remember the heaviness of the rocks and the salty dampness of winter seaweed. I feel the coolness of the air and the cry of the gulls.

REEF BAY MORNING EXPERIENCED is an 14 x 18 inch alla prima or wet-on-wet seascape painting with the quiet strength that is part of any peaceful west coast day.

(Detailed viewing and purchase information is available HERE)

A Sunday seems like a perfect release day for this new work that was completed late in 2012 and right in the heart of the gray that prevails during the short wet winter days. Yet is somehow a hopeful painting, one that fills me with resilience and inner strength against mounting melancholy. This is the kind of creative environment that feeds my creative muse and stills self-doubt with swift observation and…

View original post 126 more words

Photographing and Painting seams in time with John Daido Loori

January 4, 2013January 4, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 12 Comments

Mist fills the valley and hugs the side of cliff-face and my heart as lights starts to creep into our day. I am not going to take us to this moment though but to another. It is the one where we have already been in the brightness of the dawn on the first day of 2013.

The sun has not quite broken over Saturna Island and the sky is washed in tangerine and cotton candy. I sit waiting for its arrival next to these palm-size clusters of stones being slowly released by the rain and the sea from their sandstone and clay beds. At this moment, it seems, Time is infinite, the sun will never burn out and I shall live forever.

Where are we is often a question I ask without a satisfying answer.

However, John Daido Loori‘s work and writing in The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life has certainly taken me further in my exploration in this musing.

“There is no place to search for the truth. Though it’s right beneath your feet, it can’t be found.” – John Daido Loori.

Yet we want to know – the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Instead we must settle for fragments, interpretations and inadequate translations of specifics that will forever escape or fevered inquiring grasp.

Possibly, it is this stumbling to understand that is the appeal of simple mathematics. There is one sun in our solar system. There is one earth. There is one me.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

I wonder if he too was trying to unravel the mystery of existence? Could it be it is the driving question of creative beings which is then only veiled in texture, hue, shape and expression?

“Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

Which brings us to the idea of “suchness” or “thusness” defined in Zen literature as “a truth, reality, or experince that is impossible to express in words.” John Diado Loori describes it as follows:

It refers to the “that”, “what,” or “it” that is self-evident and does not need explanation. It is essentially being as it is, the all-inclusive reality that is manifested in as a sense of presence… Thusness is the points of two arrows meeting in midair. It is a quality of being that is nondual and does not fall into either side… Suchness is not something added from outside. It is being itself. It is in living life itself. It is the “isness” of a thing, indeed, the isness of existence itself… To bring that sense of thusness into a painting, poem, or piece of music gives it a vitality that is easily experienced, although difficult to pinpoint. It may be only an istant in time, a moment out of the constant flow of life. But to sense thusness and to be able to express it brings it into our own reality. (p. 141 – 142)

This is the inspiration for my latest large painting ” Even and the Arbutus Tree” which is to wet to share the finished work from yesterday. However, here is an image from an earlier stage for our musing.

May the moments in your day whisper their presence to you because as we know, the whisper is the easiest to hear.

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Doing a Henri Matisse in three new paintings (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
William Klein + Daido Moriyama at the Tate Modern (ilkadickens.com)
Looking back over 2012 at The Tate Galleries – Yayoi Kusama, Damien Hirst and More (selectism.com)

Spurious relationships between photograph and painting pairs

December 31, 2012December 31, 2012 / Terrill Welch / 8 Comments

I have been requested several times to create another art book that includes pairings of my photographs and paintings. The difficulty with this task is that I don’t generally paint directly from one particular photograph. I sometimes paint en plein air and other time using my whole experience and a large handful of my own reference images will paint in the studio. The two approaches are simply used as tools to capture my impressions of the world around me – a world that emotionally and physically influences my everyday because it IS my everyday. Here is a pairing that demonstrates this almost spurious relationships between what looks like a natural pairing.

The photograph “Good Morning Galiano Island” was taken yesterday at about 9:30 in the morning.

(available for closer viewing and purchase HERE)

The oil painting “Far Shore” was painted in the spring 2010 using a set of very grainy reference images from an earlier afternoon day when the fog was so heavy that the sun could just barely break through lightly onto the tip of the rock face.

(available for closer viewing and purchase HERE)

Is there a connection between these two works? Yes, but it is likely that the photograph is more influenced by the previous painting than the other way around.

Here is another example. The sunrise was deep in bruised mauve yesterday. “Mayne Island Dawn Dec 30 2012” is one of my favourites from this shoot.

The oil painting “Winter Sun” which was also completed early in 2010 using a different location as reference yet the feeling is the same, the light is the same and I can smell the same cool sea air when I look at both the photograph from yesterday and this painting from a couple of years ago.

(available for closer viewing and purchase HERE)

Well, here we are. This will be our last Creative Potager post in 2012. Also, it is a post that hints at what is ahead. I desire to take you deeper into the creative process and life of this artist. Right down into the unfinished tangle of thoughts, unfinished ideas, quick sketches and daily explorations. The posts will likely be longer and full of musings, more of a shared record, if you will, of the history behind the finished work that will eventually emerge.

ALL THE BEST OF THE NEW YEAR MY FRIENDS!

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch

From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada

For gallery and purchase information about Terrill’s photographs and paintings go to http://terrillwelchartist.com

Greetings Fir Tree and Your Simple Goodness – poem by Terrill Welch (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Storm Clouds over Strait of Georgia – postcard oil painting by Terrill Welch (creativepotager.wordpress.com)
Reef Bay Mayne Island observation to painted experience (creativepotager.wordpress.com)

Reef Bay Mayne Island observation to painted experience

December 9, 2012March 26, 2013 / Terrill Welch / 8 Comments

When do observations transform into renderings of full experiences? This is the question I ask myself while I am gathering references for my next painting. I observe. I take a total of 57 photographs. Though all are important, one later becomes my primary painting reference.

What pixels actually hold the smell of the sea and cry of the gulls?

I capture a video just over a minute in length. Later I choose a piece of music to go with it.

At what point in this process of creating a video reference did I move from observing to experiencing?

I return to the studio and rummage through my blank canvases. Eventually, I choose an 11 x 14 inch and set it upon the easel. I squeeze out the oil paint onto the palette. I listen to the video. I glance at the photograph. I pick up my brush.

Quickly and without hesitation the landscape is blocked in. Swiftly my body engages in the visceral process of painting wet-on-wet. Swish, swish and swish. I move back and forth across the studio to peer at the forms sliding off my brush onto the canvas. I remember the gray dawn with its slimness of colour. I remember the sea, and the soft rush of water as it comes ashore. I remember the heaviness of the rocks and the salty dampness of winter seaweed. I feel the coolness of the air and the cry of the gulls. Which strokes will hold the promise of a this day? Which strokes carry the sounds and the material weight of substance? Which strokes follow the soft light across the seascape. Oh, how I wonder!

Then it is done.

Too soon my logic bullies. There must be more!

But, two days have passed. I have not touched the canvas, not because technical correction would not lead to a more accurate rendering of the physical setting. Rather I do not alter the painting because nothing more is needed to render the fulness of my experience. It is done.

REEF BAY MORNING EXPERIENCED December 7, 2012 – 14 x 18 inch oil on canvas

Oh, I will photograph it again once it is completely dry and on a brighter day. But the painting of the painting is done. If I want to do more it shall be on another canvas.

What observations are you currently rendering into the fulness of your experience?

It is December 9th today and the great room is in disarray with packages to be wrapped and shipped. It is the time for this artist to begin her holiday break. I shall be back in the New Year to share more painting and photography adventured.

For now, the best of the holiday season to you and yours – one and all!

ONLINE GALLERIES with Terrill Welch paintings and photography include-

Xanadu Studio Gallery for large original paintings

Artsy Home for most original oil paintings currently available

Redbubble for photography prints, greeting cards and posters

Current Local Mayne Island VENUES –

Green House Restaurant – small original oil paintings and photography prints

Farm Gate Store – one large painting

And by appointment at Terrill Welch’s home studio

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

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

Creative Potager – Visit with painter and photographer Terrill Welch