A Brush with Life - Issue #71 Room That Art!

The gallery has been plagued with a vexing problem for years and we have just found a great solution. One of the biggest challenges of showing artwork online is determining its scale or size in relation to other aspect of a room you might like the painting to reside. We have already tried a different virtual gallery design but it was way too time intensive for us and too clumsy for users. The Artsy App shows the gallery’s paintings much easier in a potential art collector’s own room. But it takes a bit of time to get things right and one must have already downloaded the app to start with. With our new tools, we can show you the art to scale in a variety of ways immediately. Exciting right!? Then, if you want, and you have the Artsy app (or get  the app which we strongly recommend as well as following the gallery and the artists whose paintings interest you), you can still see how the painting might look in your own room as well! This is the best of the best options we think. We can now give you the general feel of the work in a room along with the other images of the painting. Sounds good? Let’s test it out in this issue as we introduce the next Arbutus Room show and see what you think...

Embracing the Unknown

Paintings that place our minds in a cradle of nature’s loving kindness.

Landscape painters Jennifer Peers, Jody Waldie, Glenda King and Terrill Welch know the power of being in nature and remembering our time on the trails beside the sea or high on the cliffs surveying the view. We need these connection more than ever right now. Allow these landscape paintings to place your mind in a cradle of nature’s loving kindness...

Maybe, pour a cup of tea spend a few moments with this new seascape by Terrill Welch.

This show is designed to linger over with those inside your household bubble with such work as this path in the trees along the seashore by Glenda King.

It could be a weekend date afternoon even, spent curled up in a chair enjoying this beautiful seashore painting by Jennifer Peers.

Or, possibly stretch out like this cat in front of Jody Waldie’s large landscape painting of the forest trail in Saint John Point park.

Whatever your art viewing needs, we are committed to finding a way to make it your best possible experience. The show is not open until Wednesday in person. However, we can give you access to everything online, right now, today. Enjoy!

Embracing the Unknown | Artsy

Paintings that place our minds in a cradle of nature’s loving kindness with work from landscape painters Jennifer Peers, Jody Waldie, Glenda King and Terrill Welch.

“Embracing the Unknown” will be showing in the Terrill Welch Gallery’s Arbutus Room from February 10 to May 16, 2021. The gallery continues to be open by appointment or the Arbutus Room can also be casually browsed on specific days during the week. However, travel to and from Mayne Island is currently recommended for only essential reasons. Until this changes, we are most happy to assist you through our online gallery and virtual conversations and tools. We have been personally delivering large paintings and shipping others in a much bigger way  since last March. It works. So if you see something you want to bring home, let us know and we will help you work out the details for a safe and distancing delivery.

Pssst! “Close To Home” is still up until Sunday if you want to take one last look to see if there is something still available that is tugging at your heart.

CLOSE TO HOME - Arbutus Room Group Show | Artsy

Jody Waldie, Jennifer Peers, Glenda King and Terrill Welch bring their most recent oil landscape paintings from Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada to the gallery’s Arbutus Room. Several of these paintings began while plein air painting this past spring and summer.

Interviews between Terrill Welch & Bill Hibberd

Landscape painters Bill Hibberd and Terrill Welch push their brushes up against the dramatic west coast edge between sea and shore....

Terrill will start their conversation and ask Bill a few question first.

Terrill: Having in the past painted the landscapes of the interior of British Columbia for many years Bill, what was the first thing that struck you as a painter about our west coast shores? Was there anything new in your approach that you needed to be able express your vision?

Bill: DRAMA! This place is an incredible visual feast. Painting in the semi arid desert was an exercise in nuance and restraint. Occasionally there would be a high chroma wet ochre clay bank countering cold Prussian blue lake waters with the gift of crisp white snow. Most often I was working very hard to tease out colours from dry sage greys or brown clay and grasses. If the Okanagan is Debussy then Vancouver Island is Led Zepplin. My approach has changed in that I feel the subjects here cry out for large scale paintings and so I am working in studio rather than on site. I want to capture the drama of this place and working large is an advantage.

Terrill: Your biography mentions being moved both emotionally and spiritually by our west coast landscapes. Can you tell us more about that?

Bill: Sitting alone among ancient Spruce and Cedars on a bed of moss and ferns and amid a chorus of croaking ravens. Crawling amongst mussel and kelp covered boulders as progressively larger Pacific waves cascade around, anointing you with salty mist. Kayaking within a massive estuary with seals and otters chasing salmon under your keel, the moaning wind carrying fog banks over you. These are the thin places that the Celts spoke of. This is where the spiritual and the physical rub shoulders. As an artist I am compelled to respond. You may notice an unusual circle beside my signature on my paintings. This is the Druid symbol for “Awen” which could be interpreted in contemporary language as “spirit flow”. The awen occurs when the artist is in process, a period where time is lost and creativity drives itself. Some will describe this as being “in the zone”. This is a supernatural, even transcendental state that all artists embrace whenever it occurs. In my experience this creative gift only happens when I am working and so I have learned to be diligent.

Terrill: I know that creating paintings that express beauty is a goal you wish to achieve in your paintings. I experience this and also much more than this when I spend time with your work. There is an appreciation for the power of the sea, a kind of awe as in that moment before we are overwhelmed. Beauty in this sense is active, something to be respected and yet is hard to resist. What is your relationship to beauty in the landscape? How does it show up in your other relationships, human or otherwise? Is there a connection?

Bill: In my art, beauty is everything. All people recognize beauty. When confronted with it their brain will release a large dose of dopamine flooding them with pleasure. Beauty is a great unifier. I do appreciate that we all have unique conceptions of beauty so no one artist’s work will resonate universally but my goal is to connect with my “tribe” through our mutual appreciation of beauty. This west coast landscape offers us a feast of beautiful opportunities. Terrill, you ask if my relationship to beauty impacts my interpersonal relationships. It’s an interesting question. When I’m not consumed with my ego, chasing selfish dreams, then yes, I do recognize my fellow human’s beauty. All of us are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. I really appreciate this best when involved with someone on portraiture or figurative projects.

Bill now has a few inquires for Terrill .

Bill: After viewing your paintings, one senses your love for the elements of the island life you have chosen. Trees, sky, water, rocks are the stars. Only occasionally you suggest human habitation with structures or boats. Terrill , do you intentionally avoid introducing people into your compositions? Do you want the viewer to experience the scene without interference from others?

Terrill: I am pretty sure that I naturally avoid introducing people into my compositions rather than doing it with a conscious intent to leave them out. From the time I had my first camera as a teenager I took landscape photographs without people in them. As I got older and went camping with friends, I would have a wonderful time and come home with no pictures of my friends. The film roll of 12 or 24 images would all be landscape images from where we had been. I now have to remind myself to take photos of my grandchildren. So to add people to a landscape painting would be a deliberate act and a serious decision because people often distract the viewer from their direct relationship with nature. We miss the sounds of the birds around us because we are too busy talking to each other. We don’t see how the rays of sun break through the clouds and reflect off the sea because there are a group of children playing along the shore. Humans are not the centre of the universe but if we put them in paintings people continue to think that they should be. We most desperately need reminders of our dependency on our natural environment and our place among nature. I want to remind myself and each other of that direct and primary relationship in my paintings.

Bill: Terrill, how do you begin your process for a new piece. Some begin on their knees in meditation, others with a camera, framing ideas. Sketches? You have years of experience now. I wonder, has your process evolved? Do you ever look back and consider reacquainting yourself with your original processes?

Terrill: I begin usually by sitting with my subject. If it is a new subject and I only have a few minutes, then I take those few minutes before starting a plein air painting sketch or begin to move around taking what I call photography sketches. I am listening, smelling, feeling the surfaces around me. I am noticing how the light is falling, the textures of the rocks, trees and even the clouds. I might taste an edible grass or leaf or lean up against a tree or sit on the ground. Then I am ready to work. When I get back to the studio, I use the painting sketches and photographs as memory aids to then paint using all of my sensory information on larger canvases. Sometimes, I study the same subject for a few years even before I paint it. When I am traveling and painting I do not usually have this luxury. I often then make written notes in the form of my social media post or blog posts that then become an additional part of my memory aids for later.... a way to anchor that first blush of experience.

Bill: Terrill, is living on a small island as romantic as it seems? How does it effect your painting? I wonder if you lived in a large city if your work would be very different.

Terrill: Living on a small island requires a certain kind of inner resourcefulness and being comfortable in one’s own skin because obviously outside stimulus and distractions are fewer then they are in urban living. We fantasize about this being romantic and an ideal life and it can be. Yet, at the same time if there are shadow sides of ourselves that we have been avoiding, this will cast long fingers into our days, particularly in winter. As for its effect on my painting, I grew up much more rural than Mayne Island. I breathe most easily in small or large stretches of nature. Our island life has my painting subjects right outside our many windows and skylights and available through one of our four doors to the yard. For the brief times I have lived in large cities, or traveled to large cities, I have found I would wake during the quietest hours, often ridiculously early, to experience the city while most are sleeping. This could be Vancouver, Toronto, London, Paris, Nice, Basel or Barcelona. I tend to gravitate to the older areas of a city and its parks. From my city painting sketches, I would say my work doesn’t change much. Natural light effects buildings and parks like it does the sea and trails of our small island. But I do paint more buildings when in urban areas of course. Such as an early morning view of Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island or a narrow alley in Venice, Italy.

Terrill: I want to personally thank you Bill for joining me in doing this joint interview for our two artist online exclusive show. I am pleased to have your energetic work as part of the gallery’s offerings and I am hopeful we may do other projects together in the future.

”West Coast Edge” opens February 17, 2021. However, it is available for viewing by subscribers now.

West Coast Edge | Artsy

Landscape painters Bill Hibberd and Terrill Welch push their brushes up against the dramatic west coast edge between sea and shore.

Mayne Island TV visits the gallery

Terrill Welch has been interviewed by volunteers Cathy Purss and Andrew Smith for “Mayne Island TV” which has been some of our local winter entertainment.

The video is 23 minutes long so you might want to get a nice cup fo tea and curl up before you start watching. Cathy and then Andrew asked great questions and we think you might enjoy this interviews quirky community charm.

Artist Terrill Welch

Hear about Terrill's inspiration and beginnings, and her understanding of Light (you may see the world differently afterward!). Several of her pictures and o...

New Releases

There are too many new releases in the past two weeks to give you all of them individually. Your eyes would likely blur towards the far reaches of our west coast mountains of we tried. The easiest way to see all of what is new is to go to the list of works in our Artsy online gallery. There are now 104 landscape paintings by six artist and 91 of these are currently available. So lots of choices at the moment.

But before you go to generally browse, there is one last curated show that includes Annerose Georgeson paintings. We want to show you these beautiful paintings in context as well.

View more of her paintings in “Between Branches - our being with trees” by clicking on the link below.

Between Branches - our being with trees | Artsy

Discover where the work and stories of Canadian landscape painters, Annerose Georgeson and Terrill Welch, meet and where they diverge from within their own unique forests and experiences.

And here is the link to all of the Terrill Welch Gallery paintings listed together…

Terrill Welch Gallery | Artists, Art for Sale, and Contact Info | Artsy

Our gallery program brings extraordinary connections to ordinary moments in our natural landscape. The Terrill Welch Gallery opened in August 2017. Since then, the gallery has more than doubled its physical gallery exhibition space and online reach.

Around the Island

We have been living up to our northern rain forest environment the past couple of weeks but between raindrops and sometimes during them Terrill has a few extraordinary island moments for you.

These first few are from Oyster Bay over on Strait of Georgia or north side of the island. That is Vancouver and the lower mainland across the way.

And these next few are taken in the rain at our Japanese garden.

Until Next Time!

Thank you for indulging my endless playing with the new toys... I mean tools! I hope you enjoyed the new way of viewing available paintings as I have exercising my creative designer genes. At the very least, it will be a surprise for most of you. Let me know what you think. I am also happy to “room” a specific painting for you if you would like to send me a photo of where you are thinking of putting it and I will see if I can find a similar room to mock-up an idea for you. It is no trouble. Honestly. Your request will help me to see what I can do with the program.

And other than that, we all wish you as pleasant as possible first two weeks of a February. If it gets miserable for you, just come on over to the online gallery or back to this issue of “A Brush with Life” and spend some time with the paintings. We are always happy to have you, no matter what.

Warm distancing hugs 🤗

Terrill 👩‍🎨🎨❤️

Terrill Welch Gallery | Artists, Art for Sale, and Contact Info | Artsy

Our gallery program brings extraordinary connections to ordinary moments in our natural landscape. The Terrill Welch Gallery opened in August 2017. Since then, the gallery has more than doubled its physical gallery exhibition space and online reach.