Terrill Welch by herself - Issue #3 Finding Something New
I might have over reached this time. Peeling back tight, dense layers of our inner protective walls is challenging, courageous and sometimes necessary work. Is it worth it? The short answer is - yes. This work builds the core strength of our psyche and spirit just like any yoga mountain, downward dog or plank pose does for our bodies. Without these inner and outer practices, we can stiffen up and become brittle, fragile and unforgiving in our body, mind and spirit. Thriving in Place is about diving into what is already deeply familiar.
Then, as my yoga teacher often says, “see if you can find something new."
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This last month has been this in my painting practice - seeing if I can find something new in what is already familiar. It is still relatively quiet on the island with more time in the studio. I have been working towards this additional time for months. Now I am here with often whole half days available to work in the studio or just think about painting and muse. The new open daily hours of 11-4 for the Gallery Pod has visitors trickle in at a comfortable flow for me to greet them and enjoy their company. There is also a new show is up in ISLAND TIME ART. I have also shared with the artists that this space will close in mid August of this year and we are all going to go ahead and make the most of the space until then. There is currently a strong show in the Gallery Pod that I will keep up until March 20th. I am well on my way to getting the paper work ready to take to the accountant for the usual annual incline tax submission. We are both healthy and well. So all is good…. Except for the canvas on the easel! That has pushed me to a creative and emotional edge!
We will get to this canvas soon enough. First, let’s take on an easier subject such as seals on the rocks at Oyster Bay. You may remember the reference image for this small study sketch below from the last Terrill Welch by herself issue. When I was feeling like I just wasn’t able to yet put paint on the large canvas for my other subject, I chose these seals and placed my small gessobord on my plein air easel right in front of the large easel with its still white canvas with a few pencil markings.
Oyster Bay is a subject I am deeply familiar though the seals haven't shown up before in one of my paintings. While painting, I save them for last as I block in the small study.
Pretty soon the paint is building up and seems to be finding its way.
Then, after a few more brushstrokes, it is done remaining loose and fresh.
The results are satisfactory and seals are good company when they are doing seal things like resting on the rocks close to shore during a high winter tide.
Artist notes: The high tides bring the seals close to shore at Oyster Bay. Their sleek shapes blend into the rocks sometimes going unnoticed until they move. Worthy of a quick sketch just for fun.
For the next week, this painting sketch is available now exclusively for paid subscribers in the "Thriving in Place" private viewing room link below:
Then, before I washed the brushes, I reached over and marked up that large white canvas with some of the left over acrylic paint.
This is all it took. This one action cracked my resistance. During the next few days I dug in and began to realize on the canvas what had become a vivid inner image…
THE STORY BEHIND THE NEW PAINTING “ONE WORLD”
* Trigger warning: though seperated from reality by paint, the following subject is graphic in its content and may be overwhelming and disturbing. Please feel free to skip past this section as you see fit for your own mental health and well-being.
At the beginning of the full invasion by Russia into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, I was appalled and shaken but remained hopeful that Russia would see its mistake and withdraw from its free and sovereign neighbouring country. A month later, I painted “My Thoughts Are East” using a collage of approaches and ideas in a painting prayer for peace.
This 40 x 30 inch painting is publicly available at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/artwork/my-thoughts-are-east
At that time, I was still hopeful for some kind of favourable negotiated resolution with Russia that respected Ukraine’s borders and democratic freedom as a country. After the earlier partial invasions by Russia of Ukraine in the Donbas and Crimea, I should have known better.
During early April 2022, war photographers began releasing images of Bucha Ukraine following Russia's retreat. The inhumane atrocities were nightmarishly haunting. I was overwhelmed by the graphic realty of sickly human behaviour. I went from our calm, warm, cozy home to the shores of the Salish Sea on the southwest coast of Canada where Mount Baker loomed across the waters in the United States. What if our neighbouring country were to attack us in this way? What would we do? These lands too have witnessed atrocities by European settlers towards Indigenous communities. There is no place of virtue for how despicable humans can be to one another. The miracle might be that we have even moments of peace, compassion and caring at all. Yet, the seascape from my island home is tranquil and takes the edge off of my inner turmoil. I return home and paint “One World, Two Places” using several partial references and my imagination. This painting is not yet released because it is one of my references for the large canvas I am working on now.
In painting the sketch, I couldn't bring myself to paint in the burnt bodies and I kept thinking about how these were someone's sons, mothers, daughters, fathers, uncles, nieces or nephews. I kept thinking about that there were mothers and fathers to those who committed these war crimes. I kept thinking about the state of mind of those who committed these atrocities. How could this happen?
Even though I kept thinking about painting this on a large canvas, I wanted this study to be the last of my references on this subject. I didn't want to do it. I mean what was the point? Not even I would want to have it out to view when it was done. But I kept thinking about it and I spent equal effort pushing the idea away. I painted other paintings. I resisted painting this painting for almost a year. Then I gave in. I knew, even though it was a gruesome subject, I was going to paint it on a large 36 x 40 inch canvas.
After sketching it out and getting those first few acrylic brushstrokes on the bodies, the process went easier as a I worked from rhe centre outward.
This is probably the most emotionally challenging painting I have ever worked on. However, I kept going and fought my horror and grief while painting one brushstroke after another until the burnt figures appeared. To honour these and all individuals who have lost their lives under such brutal acts by fellow human beings, I did my best to paint them as compassionately and beautifully as I could.
Eventually, I had the whole painting blocked in and I am letting it dry before continuing to complete it further. The titled has been distilled down to "One World".
Then I added just a few refining details before the painting came to rest.
I expected that it would take me the next few weeks to finish the painting but it didn't. Sometimes, it is just like that. However, this painting and the related study will not at this time appear in my public art portfolio. For now, my plan is only to share them through private viewing links and in this paid subscription portion of my newsletter. Once I am satisfied that the work is truly complete, I will take final images and paint the edges. Then it can be added to the inventory to remain in the background with a private viewing link. Here is the "resting" One World...
And a few challenging detailed images....
Then a room view for scale...
I know this is a difficult painting to view no matter which way it is presented. At the same time, I trust you with it. I trust your ability to live with tenderness in a harsh world. We have the ability to experience beauty without turning away from the bone-chilling darkness of human behaviour. We are this strong and this capable. For if we are afraid to look, we cannot expect the world to become a better place.
Artists painting about wars is not something new. In fact, Canada, along with other countries, has had many official war artists. These include:
A.Y. Jackson,
David Milne,
And, Alex Colville who painted the painting below after he returned from his experience of World War II as an infantry officer.
What is different this time is that no official war artists are required to bring the reality of the Ukraine war to us through our screens. We can receive as much immediate detail as we can endure. These images, both in video and photographs, are captured by everyone. There is little distinction between professionally assigned war correspondents and everyday people capturing their lived realities. Nothing can be censored or filtered out except by our personal or host platform settings. In these circumstances, we experience the rawness of war even far away as if it were us or our family and our friends. We look for an enemy only to find ourselves again. What if it were my son or daughter being sent fight a war they did not believe was right. What if they faced the choice of complying with an order to torture and rape or be shot themselves? What would they choose? Would we wish for them to die or to live with what they had done and survive? We in North America ask these questions from within the relative safety of our homes and, no matter our answers, they are of no real comfort.
Therefore, my paintings on the subject are a way to pause and go deeper into our human condition as I grapple to place these circumstances into a shifting context. This is what “Thriving in Place” allows and encourages. Maybe this is why I have chosen our smaller paid subscriber group to share them with first? Possibly, I am unsure of the paintings yet. Possibly, I am unsure if I have a right to paint such things. Yet, some paintings need to be painted regardless of how unsure I might be. For now, this painting sketch and blocked in painting are being held for viewing within this contained of Terrill Welch by herself space. Hopefully, you can stay with me while I work through this and any other future emotionally and psychologically challenging paintings.
I will leave it at this and let's move on to something more cheerful...
NEW TO ME PAINTERS
Pat Steir - An American painter "looking in color and paint for what makes the Universe hang together." If you are of the mind that dripped paint on a surface is something new, think again. Steir gave such painting practices over to large canvases back in the 1980's. Steir was born Iris Patricia Sukoneck in 1940 in Newark, New Jersey and finished art school in 1962. The best way to be introduced to her paintings is to listen to her tell her story as her hand hovers over the surface of one of her paintings or as she is splashing the paint higher than herself or walks past another in this YouTube Trailer to a documentary about her life and work...
This should be enough to send you down a rabbit hole of discovery. At least, it was for me. I love when she says "I don't want to be a famous artist. I want to be a great artist."
My second discovery was a Canadian born artist Henrietta Mary Shore, in 1880 who then lived most of her life in the United States until her death at 83 in 1963. Sadly, she spent her last years living in poverty and then was institutionalized supposedly when she was found working in a messy studio. I am sure there was more to this story as she was also suffering from depression. Still, note to self - do not let the studio clutter get so bad that it could be considered grounds for a disorganized and distressed mind.
Her life and work did overlap with Georgia O'Keeffe. In fact, they had shows in New York City at the same time in different galleries in the 1930s.
Now looking at Shore and O'Keeffe's work with the distance of time, a connection seems undeniable, though I am not sure we know who first influenced who. This painting above is the painting by Shore that first caught my attention and I did think it was O'Keeffe and was glad I checked. Henrietta Shore's work is harder to access than O'Keefe's paintings and Shore's paintings are mostly referenced on auction websites. But I thought you still might like to poke around and see what you can discover.
You may wonder why I would be interested in these artists and their appraoches that are so different from my own. I find it exciting and necessary to explore all the art history that I can. Abstract painting has been around almost as long as impressionism. It is useful in contemporary landscape painting to have a working understanding of the language of modernism art and post modernism art. This gives me a strong tool kit to draw from when tackling subjects such as "One World."
A PERSONAL STORY - The Artist’s Favourite Shirt
There is no denying it. My shirt was shot!
My favourite soft, red, plaid shirt had gone from everyday wear to a painting shirt about a year ago. The front that rubbed up against the kitchen sink and my seatbelt was wearing through even the interface underneath. A corner at the front had caught on my plein air easel and torn a while back. Truly there isn’t much left that isn’t worn and tattered. However, I am simply not ready to cut it up into painting cloths. Not yet.
So, I pulled out my 80 year old industrial Beacon sewing machine on the hope that this mostly-forgotten-relic still worked.
I made a square from an old dress that was in the ragbag that had the same soft material and folded and ironed the edges under. I had decided a piece with little embroidery might be nice.
Then, with skills I had learned when I was ten and seldom used after I had finished university in my early thirties, I set to mending the shirt.
Now, it will last likely another year, if I am lucky and don’t tear it on something else.
Do I need to say that when I am done with an item in my limited wardrobe that there is not much left to be recycled or reused? There is certainly nothing left for “gifting” to a thrift shop. No one would ever accuse me of having “lightly used” clothing. I don’t mind… and neither does my favourite soft red plaid shirt.
And yes, I sew bottoms back on and fix seams that open up as well. But I reluctantly stop short of mending socks. I know how and I have mended many in the past. I just figure one should not have to mend socks unless they really, really must… and today, I do not.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
As we lean hopefully towards spring, there is still a blast of winter and storm warnings hitting the southwest coast. I keep my raincoat in the car and in my carrying bag when I walk to get eggs. Rain showers are frequent and unpredictable. Then the sun comes out.
Its warmth is comforting and the rain splatter dries quickly while waterproof shoes squish along the damp hiking trails. I find this a time of not getting to comfortable and asking myself to just let things flow through swift changes between hope and frustration. This is early spring after all and this means it is sometimes still winter.
I wish you all the very best as you find your way towards longer and warmer days. I also want to thank everyone who has purchased a paid subscription. Your annual support and generousity is deeply appreciated.
Terrill ❤🎨
P.S. A reminder that you can comment at the bottom of this issue by viewing it online. Or if you wish, you can write to me directly at: tawelch@shaw.ca
P.S.S. There is also a new show that just opened in ISLAND TIME ART for you to check out below...
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