Terrill Welch by herself - issue #14 Short Reprieve, Rest and Cold Snap
I haven’t been painting much for just about a month except for some digital exploration with a new Apple Pencil that I received from my children and using a painting app - Art Set 4. We didn’t go anywhere over the holidays and we had very little and only selected company visiting. I could have painted but I didn’t. I had released 30 new paintings for 2023 and I had three that I held over for release in 2024. I also sold four in the first week of January. It all just seemed like enough and I knew that, starting last week in the second part of my Canadian landscape course, I would be completing about painting a week for 12 weeks straight. So I took the break. I left the studio area tidy and rested my painting muscles. I am in this profession for the long haul and burnout can be a real thing for artists. I have never experienced a painter’s block but it is not something on my wish list either. However, I can tell you about the latest painting that has sold and show you a few digital painting studies. I am also working on an idea for a new show “Trees and Trails” in the gallery pod for next month though there is nothing more to say about this just yet. In addition, I have been out on the trails and down beside the sea. Hopefully this feels like enough by the time you get to the end of this issue.
WHAT HAS SOLD
I mentioned the first three paintings that sold in the latest issue of “A Brush with Life” earlier this month. However, the next day after that publication, a painting sold to an art collector in New Jersey in the United States. So I packed it up for international travel and off it went.
Something else worth noting is that technology now allows International purchases on the Artwork Archive in Canadian dollars. This means I no longer have to list my artwork in U.S.A. currency for International purchases. All purchases can now be made with Canadian currency and your country of origin banking system sorts out the exchange rate on your behalf for most places. Most Canadians pay by E-transfer. But if desired, there is now an option to pay through PayPal right in the web-linked invoice I send. What this means is that with the latest price increase, this price is also the International price in Canadian currency and you will notice the online gallery now has a “c” in front of the “$” sign. It is all really pretty cool from an administrative perspective on my end. Let me know if you have any questions about the changes of course and I am hoping it is straightforward and actually offers an even better service to art collectors, particularly International art collectors.
WHAT I AM LEARNING - ICEBERG AND JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE and more…
Since it is has been rather chilly in Canada lately, I thought I would share this painting that was recently introduced to me by Neil McClelland in the second part of The Canadian Landscape painting course with Vancouver Island School of Art. With the exception of Quebec, Jean Paul Riopelle is likely more widely known for his importance to Canadian art outside of Canada. However, I suspect if you look through the images of some of his over 3,000 paintings you will find at least some that are familiar. There is a timeline to assist with the changes to his work in different periods on the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation website.
Jean Paul Riopelle, CC GOQ RCA (October 7, 1923 - March 12, 2002) Iceberg no 1, 280 x 430 cm (110 x 170 inches), 1977.
Notes summarized from Art Canada Institute: Jean Paul Riopelle is one of Canada’s most significant artists of the twentieth century. Attracted to painting from a young age, in 1943 he enrolled in the art program at Montreal’s École du meuble, where he met the painter Paul-Émile Borduas (1905–1960). The encounter was life changing for Riopelle, who went on to join the Automatistes, an influential group of Québécois artists, and to be a signatory of their landmark 1948 manifesto, Refus global. He later settled in Paris, where he became the most famous Canadian painter in Europe and the rest of the world. Stylistically linked to many of the most important art movements of his time, Riopelle’s legacy is his large and diverse body of work, expressing both abstraction and figuration in imaginative and surprising ways.
Notes summarized from Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation: From his tutelage under Paul-Émile Borduas to the decades spent in France and his eventual return to Quebec, Riopelle’s associations were numerous: the Automatistes, the Surrealists, the Paris School, lyrical abstraction. He hung around with André Breton, Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti. Painter Joan Mitchell was a longtime romantic partner for 25 years in Paris. Their relationship ended at the time Riopelle returned to Canada in 1970.
I share this because not all of Canadian landscape painting is Tom Thomson, Group of Seven, Emily Carr and Terrill Welch artwork. There is a notable collection of internationally recognized abstract painters as well which are worth learning about, even if abstract painting is not really your thing. But speaking of Tom Thomson…
When it comes to painting, sometimes getting the feeling and energy right is far more powerful than rendering our subject visually perfect down to the last blade of grass. There is of course a place for hyper-realistic artworks. However, directional brushstrokes and the immediacy of gestural mark-making offer an ingredient or painting language that provides full sensory recognition and far surpasses the limitation of simply seeing.
By way of example, I present “Rapids on Muskoka River” by Tom Thomson, 1916 at a little more than 8 x 10 inches.
I want to whoop and holler over the roar of the river when I am engaged with this small, likely plein air, painting. This painting makes me grin from the top of my head down to the bottom of my feet and then laugh a big belly laugh.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Additional notes - Alternate titles: Rapids in Muskoka River; Rapids, Muskoka River
Spring 1916
Oil on board
8 1/4 x 10 1/2 in. (21 x 26.7 cm)
WHAT I’VE BEEN WORKING ON AND THE DIGITAL PAINTING ADVENTURE
By now, I am sure you are deeply familiar with my adventurous spirit and desire to try new things. I had planned on getting an Apple Pencil when I purchased my new iPad some years ago but they didn’t put it with my purchases and I just never got around to doing it. My two children decided that I MUST have one and went together and got it for me. Then I went on a search for an app that would feel the most like working with actual art supplies and chose the Art Set 4 app. I am not sure how much I will use it but it is handy for getting ideas down without having to go to the studio.
Here are my very first rudimentary attempts.
Artist notes: Sometimes the greys of the west coast seas swallow us whole so that we are bathed in murky mist.
This second one is a wave study as I continue to learn how the tools work.
Artist notes: I love when a big roller comes in with such volume and force it is all that I can feel.
This final digital painting sketch is part of my class assignment for a memory painting. In this course the instructor allows us to submit digital painting as a media option. The last assignment for this class will be to paint again in a different way using an earlier work as reference. I will likely use this digital painting for that exercise and paint it in oils. At least, it will be a possibility.
Artist notes: There was a thunderstorm and lightning had just struck the lake. My brother and I wanted a better view so we climbed the old fir and tallest tree around. Our mother came running to find us because of the storm and when we called from up in the tree, she didn’t panic but said in the calmest voice imaginable that we were to come right down. Once on the ground she then explained the dangers of being up in the tallest tree during a lightning storm. I was six coming on seven shortly and my brother was four and half years old. He was above me farther up the tree. Mom is holding my youngest brother who is two years old. How she managed to keep us all healthy and alive is nothing short of a miracle.
These digital artworks haven’t been shared beyond a small group of fellow artists. You, as a reader of “Terrill Welch by herself,” are as usual subjected to my more private and intimate explorations. If anything comes of it, you will be able to say… oh I remember when she was first interested in this approach. 😉
I also have one other abstract landscape work that I just finished yesterday that is still sitting on the easel.
I am not sure it is actually finished but I feel like it is, at least for the moment.
Artist notes: The feelings and textures of late August with blackberry jam, plump aubergines, heirloom tomatoes, and one clump of poplars at sunrise next to the sea that sends me far away to another home as the dollar leaves rattle in the wind.Artist notes: The feelings and textures of late August with blackberry jam, plump aubergines, heirloom tomatoes, and one clump of poplars at sunrise next to the sea that sends me far away to another home as the dollar leaves rattle in the wind.
I know, I know! I don’t do a lot of abstract paintings but you may see more of these over next couple of months as I work my way through the second part of “The Canadian Landscape” course. When the title of the unit is “Abstract the Landscape” this is a pretty good indication where I will be going.
HIKES AND A FEW COLD WEATHER ADVENTURES
This past month has offered weather from shirtsleeve warmth to thick down coat cold and everything in between. I have enjoyed it all!
Hiking Saint John Point is a frequent favourite.
Artist notes: The feelings and textures of late August with blackberry jam, plump aubergines, heirloom tomatoes, and one clump of poplars at sunrise next to the sea that sends me far away to another home as the dollar leaves rattle in the wind.
And this beautiful tree is still there for admiring.
There are other arbutus trees that catch my attention as well.
And other parts of the trail that hold interest as I hike both ways along Navy Channel so as to stay in the winter sunshine.
Along the sea on the Strait of Georgia, the high winter tides bring the seals in close to shore.
There funny little faces always make me smile.
I also surprised an otter on a rough sea day
when it was likely hard to hear me quietly walking up to the top of the bank.
But then it turned cold with an artic front dropping the temperature down to an uncommon for here temperature of -10 Celsius with a windchill factor sitting at around -20. The single pane glass in the studio loft upstairs sported ice on the inside.
This never before seen here phenomenon repeated itself in our unheated entryway where the antique windows are equally as thin.
The cold snap was cold enough that the sea was freezing in thick layers where it splashed up on the sandstone rocks. The seals didn’t seem to mind.
The coldest weather didn’t last long but it was memorable and we were happy to have our propane fireplace as a support for our in-floor hot water heating system which just can’t keep up when we get well below freezing.
However, snow seems to still be with us!
We were lovely and cozy though and mostly enjoyed seeing itby looking out the windows when I wasn’t out shovelling the walkway to the gallery pod.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Before I close off, I want to thank everyone for renewing their paid subscription to “Terrill Welch by herself.” Your support makes it possible to use this platform for all three services that also includes the quarterly publication of “A Brush with Life” and the “Just Art Calendar” each month. I can’t thank you enough, truly! It makes a big difference and it is so very nice to have your company here.
By next issue, I should have a few more new oil paintings to share again and it is likely to be starting to feel a little like early spring here on the southwest coast of Canada. The days are already getting noticeably longer and I saw snowdrops blooming already in an island garden. Our brief cold snap is but a distant memory.
May you also be finding your way into the light and warmth of our new year.
Warm regards and kindness as always,
Terrill 👩🎨🎨❤️
P.s. Feel free as always, to write to me privately, if you wish at: tawelch@shaw.ca
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