Terrill Welch by herself - issue #11 Five Brand New Paintings and a Story
My hand grips the pliers to loosen the lid on a tube of French Ultramarine and I squeeze it liberally into a mound on the upper left hand side of my palette. It has been a productive month and there has been a lot of squeezing of various pigments suspended in walnut oil. The results are satisfying and I am ready to share them with you.
First is a small rich rendering of a leaning Arbutus tree at Bennett Bay.
Artist notes: Leaning over Bennett Bay, the Arbutus tree calmly invites me into its view. Stay a while it seems to say just as a raven calls over head and forest birds chatter in the branches. So I do.
Then there are the maple trees inspired by those beside Active Pass at the Georgina Point Lighthouse.
Artist notes: The days are short and the afternoon sun barely reaches around the island hills to the Maple Trees. One must wait until later in the day… but not too late.
A larger canvas was used for a work you can walk right into that depicts part of the cliff side trail at Saint John Point.
Artist notes: The rains had let up and I scramble along the cliff side of Navy Channel on Saint John Point. It is midday at the end of January with the low hanging sun casting strong shadows over the rich colours of the landscape. There is just the trees and me to enjoy the folds of the sandstone dressed in a garland of moss.
As you will soon discover why, I have been thinking about my parentS and their farm these past few days and I rendered a view looking down the Stuart river from their front yard.
Artist notes: The Stuart River is the Sky’s gift in the early fall when hard frosts are released into the cool sunshine. This is my childhood home as it is most often in my mind’s eye.
Finally, a brilliant bright sunrise painting of Reef Bay would make Canadian landscape painter Tom Thomson hoot with delight.
Artist notes: In December one doesn’t need to rise early for sunrise. However, when I got to the shores of the Salish Sea at Reef Bay I thought I was going to be cheated of any colour and that the drama of the morning was going to escape my hungry eyes for another day. Then it happened with a grandness that was greater than my imagination.
Each of these paintings has a story and the landscapes are all significant and intimately familiar to me. I have completed them as part of a Canadian Landscape painting course I am taking through the Vancouver Island Art School with Neil McCelland. That said, the paintings are very much my own work and paintings I would have rendered regardless. The course just means I have artistic company and sometimes a second opinion about what is happening on the canvas. I like having both! Sometimes a spark from a conversation brings me to focus in a slightly different way than I would have otherwise. This is important and its value cannot be overestimated. My practice of continuous study helps to keep me extra fresh and excited in my painting practice.
This is your paid subscription preview of these new works and then, as usual, I will be releasing these paintings publicly. This time at a rate of one a week starting next Friday. I am still working on getting final images and putting them in the inventory program. However, if something interests you now, just send me a note and we can go from there. The gallery pod is now open again everyday 11-4 for walk in self-browsing. These new paintings will be in the next show opening at the beginning of November. So if you are on island do drop in and have a look.
Now for a story that I had thankfully written over three weeks ago! You will understand why when you read the next section after this missive.
MOOSE HUNTING SEASON
In October, the north central interior of British Columbia is already getting dark fairly early in the evening. My legs swing freely under the round oak table in my grandmother’s kitchen. The room is crowded with aunts and uncles and second cousins. Just then, my dad looks at me and ruffles my already messy tangled head of hair and says something about it being time to find my pyjamas. Mom has already taken a dipper of warm water from the water jacket on side of the wood cook stove and poured it into the enamel wash basin. As she pushes the clothesline-dried stiff washcloth into the water, she looks at me and half smiles at my heavy eyelids. My face, hands and feet are scrubbed pink and squeaky clean. Then it is my younger brother’s turn. He is not as compliant and wiggles and squirms with his face screwed up as if he is being tortured.
Once she has us washed up, we follow mom into the small bedroom behind the wood cook stove. Our eyes quickly adjust to the room with its only swath of light coming from the gas lamp hissing in the kitchen. Our pyjamas were laying out on top of the wool blanket of a carefully made bed where mom and had put them before it got dark. The room is cool from keeping the door closed and we change quickly. Following a round of good nights, we are tucked into heavy canvas covered and down filled and flannel lined sleeping bags on the floor of the living room rug. My eyes closed as my ears listened to the friendly banter in the kitchen. There is the shuffling of playing cards punctuated by the stacking and sliding of pinochle chips. The smell of cigarette smoke and the last fresh pot of evening coffee drifts across the living room as if carried on that singular beam of lamplight coming from the next room. The same lamplight that had reached into the bedroom with our pyjamas and that is diagonal to where we are sleeping. That is where mom and dad will sleep. Grandma and grandpa’s bedroom is directly in front of me. It is closest. If I get scared in the night, I can run really fast and leap in on grandma’s side of the bed. She will be holding the blankets up having heard my feet beating faster than my heart to their bedside. But on this night, I don’t wake up.
The next thing I hear is the metal hinges on the small wood stove that sits next to the living room door. My grandfather is using a big knife to shave rooster tail curls on the kindling. It is cold in the still-dark poorly insulated room. My eyes adjust to be able to see grandfather’s full length grey wool underwear rimming his rolled up plaid shirtsleeves. The hunting knife on the belt buckle of his pants is poking out at an odd angle as he kneels beside the stove. There is a scratch of a big wooden match and my grandfather’s face is lit in the glow as he leans into the stove to light the fringes he has made on the kindling. He then turns and wordlessly winks at me before putting in a couple of small dry larger sticks and then after a few minutes a couple of bigger holding pieces of wood. Closing the door of the wood stove and with the damper left wide open he moves through the dark kitchen. I can just barely see him as he grabs his hat that seems to find its own way onto his bald head. Quietly out the door he goes to the outhouse. When he comes back in, I can hear the pumping of the gas lamp and then, with the striking of another smaller match, the kitchen is bright again. My dad appears in the doorway of the second bedroom already fully clothed in a similar fashion to my grandfather. Dad nods silently to my grandpa, looks briefly at me and steps into the living room to turn the damper down on the stove while my grandfather lights the wood cook stove. The coffee is already starting percolate on the propane range on the other side of the room.
I drift off again and when I wake the lamp is out in the kitchen and the door to outside is being squeezed softly shut. I wait for a few more minutes and hear the familiar muffled sound through the fog of an outboard motor being crank and started on the river. They will be well up river by daybreak. It is moose hunting season.
I fall soundly back to sleep and wake abruptly as my brother steps on my leg as he scrambles up into the now warm room where my grandmother and mother are having coffee and smoking cigarettes as they wait for us to get up and the men to come back down river for breakfast. They are in no rush. If the men get a moose it will mean fresh liver for breakfast and stuffed heart for supper that evening.
My brother and I sit kneeling against the back of the couch in the living room looking out the window over the river until we hear the boat coming through the still heavy fog. Leaping up we run to kitchen to announce that they’re almost here.
“Well, go look and see if they got anything!”
We look but can’t be sure because of the fog.
Pretty soon Dad comes through the door with a liver rapped in a burlap sack and utters the first words he has likely spoke since he got out of bed.
“Nice young bull, just on this side of Sturgeon Point.”
My grandmother hands him an aluminum basin and he heads back out the door to wash the warm liver in the river off the dock to clean and cool it before bringing it back in for my grandmother to thinly slice and fry in the bacon fat she has ready to heat up in the cast iron pan on the wood cook stove. She has already plucked an onion drying on a hook in the entryway next to the home canned peaches and chops it up to add with the liver. In another pan she has leftover potatoes frying and mom is slicing homemade bread and setting the table. Next my mom gets a couple of mostly red tomatoes that are pulled out from the box under bed where they have been put to ripen before the first frost in early September. They are thinly sliced to be shared along side green bean and mustard pickles.
Dad and my grandfather wash up in the sink with huge grins on their faces and breakfast is on the table. Just like that! I take the smallest piece of liver, a large piece of homemade bread to smother in butter and homemade raspberry jam along side a few potatoes. I skip the anaemic looking tomatoes and shutter at the thought of green bean and mustard pickles.
There is no lingering after breakfast. Dad and grandpa are out the door again shrugging into their canvas wool-lined jackets and hats. The rifles have already been put back behind the door though not unloaded. (1) I can hear the boat motor start up again as they take the quartered moose down to the meat house situated along the road beside the river that takes travellers to the main road at granny’s hill and just before you cross the creek. The small village of Vanderhoof is about 40 km of gravel road away.
Mom and grandma visit as they wash up and dry the dishes from breakfast. It is now full daylight and the fog has mostly lifted off the river. However, the cool dampness goes bone deep as the sun catches the ice at the edge of the puddles on the dirt road. I have had enough of being inside. But my mother is still busy with morning chores and helping my grandmother get things ready for lunch. She is not yet able to take us out. I am not discouraged.
“I want to go see dad” I say in my firmest four year old voice. I am braced and prepared for the list of reasons why this is not a good idea.
“It is a long way to walk” my grandmother states with a neutral indifferent tone.
“I can do it” I reply.
“I will stay on the road and I won’t get lost” I add with confidence.
“You will get really cold” my mother added.
“I will wear my toque and mitts” I respond.
This was a real declaration for how serious and determined I was because I was not fond of wearing either. So with knowing resignation, I am bundled up in a heavy wool jacket, home knit mitts and toque and told to stay out of the frozen puddles as I slipped my equally homemade spiral wool socks into my rubber boots with their felt insoles for at least a little warmth.
I was toasty warm as I begin my trek down the dirt road. I walk past the barn on my right and the little cabin on my left with the root cellar beside it on the river side of the road. Then I come to the tool shed that smelled of buckets of old motor oil and diesel. I turn and wave to my mother and grandmother who are still looking out the window. The road turns just slightly and I look back one more time. I am no longer able to see the window with the tall grass along the edges of the road. I begin to doubt my bravery. But when I turned back look down the road, I can just glimpse the screened in meat house. I can hear my father laughing as they worked to get the meat hung and sharpened their knives so they could skinned the hide off carefully not to let the hair touch and spoil the flavour of the meat.
My feet were starting to get cold and I rubbed my nose with my mitten covered hand in hopes of being able to feel it again while with my other hand I pulled my toque down around my ears. Then I pushed it up again. I hated not being able to hear properly and preferred cold ears to muffling the sounds around me. I walked a little faster as the damp air crept through my denim pants. I finally made it to the meat house. By then my teeth are chattering. My dad looked up from what he was doing to where I was standing on the bank at the edge of the road. He grinned and put down his skinning knife and came to where I was standing.
“You’re looking pretty cold Midge” he said rather matter of factly. (2)
“You better head back to the house and warm up” dad says as he knelt next to me and rubbed his strong hands up and down my wool jacket.
I didn’t argue and turn back towards the house and start back up the road. I am determined not to cry even though I am getting colder with every step I take along the road next to the tall grasses. The bare poplar trees rattling in the cool autumn breeze. I start to shiver that teeth rattling vibrating kind of of shiver. I make it as far as the tool shed before the tears started to roll down my cold red cheeks. I can see my mother looking out the window where she had been watching for me to come back. By the time I get to the door that mom is holding open. I am now wailing inconsolably. My mother and grandmother both help to get my toque, mitts, boots and jacket off. I am still sobbing and unable to speak. I am stood beside the wood cook stove. They start rubbing my hands and feet and my grandmother rubs my hands through my hair because she said this would warm me up faster. I finally stop crying. No one gives me a hard time for being wrong about how cold it was outside and that maybe I shouldn’t have walked to the meat house to see my dad. Instead, my grandmother makes hot chocolate and they start to set the table for lunch. By this time, my hands are starting to ache as they warm up and my toes are tingling. It is only moose hunting season on the Stuart River at my grandparents. I am going to be okay.
End notes:
(1) For as long as I can remember, until the gun laws changed and required that guns and ammunition be locked up separately, and even then from habit, I assume that all guns are loaded unless I check for myself. This is because most often they were loaded. It was considered a safety practice in these rural woods with no phones. You didn’t want to be trying to find your shells and get a gun loaded if a bear was tearing into a cabin looking for an easy snack. Or if a pack of wolfs attacked the old lab guarding the house. But mostly, it was the drunken city sports hunting that were the biggest concern. They sometimes didn’t want to get off of private property and might need a little persuading and there was no point in taking a gun with you to have a conversation unless you were prepared and ready to use it.
(2) Midge was what I was called until I went to school and was short for “Midget” which was the first comment my dad made when he first saw me after I was born - she is a little tiny midget. Highly inappropriate today, the name stuck until I could declare otherwise after my first day of school when the teacher did roll call and I kept waiting for her to say my name. But she didn’t and when she was finished calling everyone’s name she told us to take out our blue notebooks. Then she came over and knelt down beside me to ask why I didn’t answer when she called my name. She asked if I was indeed “Terrill Welch”. I replied no and that my name was Midge. At this point she explained that Midge was my nickname and that Terrill was my real name. I absorbed this information quietly and then asked my mother if it was true as soon as I got into the car when she picked me up at the end of the school day. She confirmed that it was. I declared then and there that I was no longer to be called “Midge” but by my real name “Terrill” from now on… and so it was.
AUTUMN ON MAYNE ISLAND
During this past month, between painting, having a new septic system put in and my father having a heart attack and then a successful triple bypass open heart surgery at almost 87 years old, I have also made it out on the trails and down by the sea. My parents are top of mind because when my father had a heart attack, they were still farming and living 43 km outside of the town of Vanderhoof, without electricity, in north central British Columbia. However, our family has scrambled together to get behind them. My younger sister has been with them in Vancouver from shortly after the air ambulance plan landed having come down from Armstrong British Columbia. My youngest brother has taking on what needs doing on the farm, including, at the request of my parents, organizing the shipping and sale of their 60 head of cattle. Other family members pulled together to get them a place to rent close to Vanderhoof with all the usual amenities for this coming winter and moved their belongings. A gate has been installed at the entrance to their property and the farm house will be closed up winterized. My daughter came and stayed with my husband David (who cannot stay by himself overnight any longer) so I could go help out and visit dad and mom in Vancouver for two nights. It wasn’t much time but I was grateful for the opportunity. My son and his partner hosted my mom and sister for several weeks in Vancouver and then me when I went over, along with my nephew for a few days. I am so very grateful that I have the family I have because of how well they work together. My siblings and my children and nieces and nephews as well as aunts and uncles have all stepped up as needed. No one waits to be asked when they can see something that needs to be done. At the same time, no one has a strong opinion that they will stand behind about what mom and dad should or should not do. We research options and follow their lead for what they want to do. Still, it is a difficult time. My parents arrived home this past week, after an air ambulance trip half a province away that was followed by a major surgery, to find themselves moved into a new place to live and their animals sold. We who helped out had and have the easy part of this adventure. Now dad must heal over the winter and they both need to adjust, absorb and regroup from these major life altering events. This is where I can be key part of their support due to the fact that I have a long standing Saturday morning phone call with them. Needless to say, nature walks have been more significant to me than usual.
Here are a few of my most favourite reference captures during the past month for you…
Even when it is about to rain a rain we desperately need, I love being beside the sea.
The seagulls are back in abundance and have Settled onto the sandstone reefs for winter.
I go hopefully back to the maple trees to see if a view I have imaged to be there has materialized. Not quite yet but close!
I go to the Japanese Memorial Gardens several times soaking up one of the few places on the island that has bright red and orange autumn colour.
The newly painted red bridge has become very much a focal point in the gardens.
I wander around seeing which is its best side.
But it is the less direct attention and more sheltered positions that seem to capture my imagination at the moment.
I lean into the places where the sunlight is brief and unexpected.
I seek out the small delights that at other times I might have missed.
I find myself slipping out to familiar places at dusk.
The gold leaves compete with the setting sun.
I roam to another corner of the island before the light completely fades.
Then it is gone. Darkness hangs heavy and yet inviting.
I find that I am not finished yet and often head back out for sunrise as the gulls are waking. This inner restlessness can only be soothed by time in direct contact with nature. The days are filled with urgent task so I bookend my walks with the last and first light.
Sometimes it is the whistle of the ferry navigating through the fog that calls.
I leave the morning studio and go to see what I can see.
Then I go yet again to Reef Bay to find small wonders as everything else is temporarily hidden.
With deliberate effort and well worn practices for navigating adversities, I keep my inner footing for now. My parents and my family have still have a rough few months ahead of them but the outcomes for the immediate future seems promising. However, I am reminded that we do not live forever and our time here is temporary. For now, I will take today, this day and this hour and revel in small pleasures like my mother peeling the many pronged carrots for dinner at my son’s place that were grown by my daughter-in-law in their small urban front yard garden.
She has had a tough couple of days with very little sleep when I took this photograph. But, while her husband of 67 years rests his heart before surgery, she remains in the moment and still finds something to laugh about.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
The next few months with their shorter days will offer a natural reprieve into semi hibernation. It is not a quite time however. Soon. With the world is in turmoil in several places, we shall many times have a heavy heart just because of known conditions never mind what we do not yet know. I hope this issue of Terrill Welch by herself will offer some opportunities for resilience. I hope it brings you a chance to enjoy small pleasures and be reassured that all is not lost. Another large 36 x 40 inch painting is already on the easel.
I will, as usual, paint my way through adversity. Within this contemplative, almost spiritual, practice usually comes clarity about what I must do next to assist with making this world a better place.
For now, as always, I wish you all the best!
Terrill 👩🎨🎨❤️
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