Terrill Welch by herself - issue #30 Boldly Forward
May is such a generous month for ambition and possibilities! I am boldly going forward with the notion of well-being through painting. Well-being through the act of painting and well-being through the company of my paintings. I have been mulling over the best way to present my promised “Token of Appreciation savings” and I believe I have come up with a solution that respects our varying desires, circumstances and sensibilities.
If you are subscribed to “Terrill Welch by herself” there is little doubt that you appreciate the experience of well-being through the company of my paintings because this is what I most frequently offer in this space.
However, while some of us will feel flush and ready to explore my savings offer, others will be like - just browsing thanks!
Still others are like - can you PLEASE just let me get to the paintings so I can make a decision on which one to add to my art collection! If this is you, head over now to my “Token of Appreciation savings” and more offer at the link below:
Terrill Welch
Please note: The savings opportunity has ended and the link has been update to share just the price bracketed private viewing room options.
I have also taken the time to create special private viewing rooms divided by price brackets allowing you to consider a selected group of ten paintings within your personally defined price range. The special offer applies to all available work but these private viewing rooms may be of assistance in providing a focused place to begin your decision-making process.
Now, for well-being through the practice of painting, I have a large new canvas completed with you followed by one failed and then recovered experiment on paper. Let’s begin shall we!
THE PAINTING OF A FLOATING ARRANGEMENT OF SHELLS
Saturday, 12 April 2025 to Saturday, 3 May 2025
Though this large 48 x 40 inch oil painting with an acrylic underpainting was completed over almost a three week in painting time with the reference having been gathered a few days before this, my memory of the process is of a fluid flow from beginning it end.
The references for this painting are few and on this rare occasion the painting stay fairly true to what I saw and experienced when discovering this floating arrangement of shells that would have fit in the palm of my hand. In the third of these three images below, I have manipulated the reference using a digital editing tool called BeCasso which allows me to apply various filters and techniques and reduce visual clutter while keeping the strength of the light, forms and colour. The other two are as they were when I took them with my phone camera.
Above: Reference images taken and edited by Terrill Welch on 9, April 2025.
I had been out in the afternoon around 3:30 pm at Reef Bay on Mayne Island just as a lazy tide was drifting in. I was thrilled to find this floating arrangements of shells as I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts. Though it was a small arrangement in real life, I knew I wanted to paint it large and with a sense of intimacy as I explored its unique relationships and shapes. I can still smell the dank seashore after a low tide during a day of sun. There was hardly a breeze and the chirping of the oystercatchers were more plentiful than the calls of seagulls.
I started by putting on the hanging wire on the round table in the great room so I could attach the large canvase to the easel without the top mount.
The Spring sun is bright in the studio area.
It is the curse of the art studio’s south exposure. I put the canvas on the easel anyway.
By the next day, Sunday, 13 April 2025, our frequent southwest coast clouds offer me filtered light to begin the underpainting in acrylic.
Though the floating arrangements of shells is a new and unique subject that is something less common to observe, the painting process itself is familiar. I wanted the deep red areas to assist me with getting the mixed darks even darker and to provide a richness that would be difficult to get any other way. From there I added orange as I was feeling my way into the shapes and the strength of the composition which I wanted to twist just slightly to help with a feeling of dynamic movement.
I then added a yellow to offer some depth and harmony connection that I feel will be needed due to the stark warm/cool contrast between the shells and the seaweed filled sea cover the sandstone reef.
I leave it here for a day to think about how the shapes are interacting. Will it work I ask myself and the answer from myself is only a uncommitted shrug as I turn away from the easel to clean the brushes.
The next step is to begin the over painting. I decide to start with the deepest blue knowing it will be a good anchor and reference point for whatever else follows.
I added the dark warm brown purple areas next.
From this point forward, the painting process is a little soft around the edges. I have a few images as the painting developed after a nine day pause. However, I was rebellious about having any intrusion into this reflective space. I have no obvious or self-revealing reason for my resistance. I was simply unwilling to document beyond the minimum necessary once I started working on the painting again. In hindsight, maybe it was the vast reach between warm and cool I was attempting to balance on the end of my brushes. Or, it could just be that this time is a break in my actual course work and I am revelling in the freedom of it all. Whatever the reason, this is where I was and now I will share what I did record of the process.
I keep going.
I continue to add more loose brush marks onto the canvas.
Then I leave the painting for another week. I could tell you about a series of events that prevented me from getting back to the easel. They are not likely valid reasons, except for maybe going to the city to sign our income tax so that it can be filed. That one I believe is a legitimate interruption of my studio time. I also did the experiment with paper impressions that I documented earlier during this time.
The painting is quickly blocked in leaving me with many wet areas to build in a very few details and make adjustments to such things as the strange troll face in the top shell that is actually a partial snail shell.
I continue to work on the painting over the next two days in a slow and deliberate fashion where I pause and stand back almost with each brushstroke. But it doesn’t take much until the painting rocks easily to a place of resting with only a few nudges from me.
I take a few detail images to have a closer look at various areas.
The face is now gone though the shape of the worn snail shell remains elusive. I leave it.
The dark yellow ochre seaweed floating below the surface of the sea is connected by the bubbles to the floating shells. Each is in their own space yet come together as one.
I can feel the heaviness and purposeful weight of the layers as I review the images of the details. The painting dissolves into brush marks at this distance on the 24 inch or so patches of the canvas.
I feel myself separate from the canvas. It is on its own now. I may at some point in the future make a change but the chances of this are low. Be what it may, the painting is finished.
There will be a final high resolution image taken once the work is not so shiny and the edges still need to be painted. That said, let’s see what it looks like in a gallery space.
Or maybe in a quiet corner of a private home?
How about high up in an open concept apartment?
After all, I imagine my paintings being lived with and having conversations with viewers as they go on adventures far away from my brushes, experiments and ideas. Or the painting could just stay with me for years into the future. I wouldn’t mind. As is frequently the case, when I am really taken with a subject, I paint it larger as a way of keeping with me for a while longer. Sometimes this strategy works.
SHELLS AT SEA – A LONG WORK ON PAPER PROCESS
Tuesday, 29 April 2025 - Sunday, 4 May 2025
I began a journey of failure and discover working with uncoated paper on Tuesday that end today, Sunday, 4 May 2025. In between and around this process another 48 x 40 inch seafloor walnut oil on canvas of floating shells has been completed. However, for now, let’s stick to my experiment to see if I could make impressions of the shells naturally arranged at the shore by the sea.
Spoiler alert: I went to Reef Bay on Mayne Island with an idea I had been thinking about for weeks and it failed spectacularly! Sometimes creative practice is like this. I salvaged what I could and will have move on by the end of the post.
The tide was low and the empty shells near the shore are slowly being absorbed back into the seafloor. I knew I didn’t have long to try my idea for making impressions of paper of the their shapes along the shore.
I tried uncoated paper I had soaked at home. It just fell apart and stuck to everything like bad toilet paper. I had extra paper with me so I tried starting with dry paper and soaking in with water from a spray bottled. Neither method resulted in making anything but a few dents and tears in the paper.
So I decided to go home and get more paper and charcoal. What I was attempting to do with poor results was to find an environmentally safe way to make an impression of the seafloor to capture its natural state in a new way. I thought the estampage process used to take impressions of writing on ancient stones might work. It didn’t or at least, I hadn’t figured out a way yet.
Next I try some rubbings of shells. It wasn’t anymore successful. On a whim, I drew around the outside edges of a few shells. This tickled something of a possibility but I was out of time I could use in the field for today. The long necked gadget is to hold my phone camera for video recording. Though I have no use for them at the moment, I have filed these video clips away for future consideration.
I gathered up a very few shells and a rock to take with me back to the studio. In my care for this place, I will return these beach items soon but I want to see if I can push this notion of outlines and rubbings a bit further in the studio. I certainly have enough uncoated paper with its blue-white hue to practice on!
As I was gathering things up I started to play with the phone camera a bit.
With a couple of handfuls of images and videos, I left the beach. I was neither elated nor disappointed. It had been a good time in the field even with unsatisfactory results. I was content rather than supercharged with excitement. Sometimes this is enough.
I lay out the torn and crumpled paper to dry. I have no immediate use for it but couldn’t bear to just through it in the compost wet. Today, I will stack it up for maybe recycling or maybe to set the shells and rock on to rub and trace.
This morning, Sunday, 4 May 2025, surrounded by shells, charcoal, pencils and crayons and our breakfast dishes, I laid out a clean sheet of paper with my sketch book underneath. The dishes could wait but the soft morning light wouldn’t. I traced shells in random patterns then coloured them in. I made cutouts of a mussel shell and glued it down.
I wasn’t satisfied. The mystery of those observations at the shore were still missing. I cut out the drawing in a random shape and glued it to another sheet of paper.
I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was still missing. Then I remembered the sheets of paper I had laid out to dry on Tuesday. I used blue paper clips to hold it in place over the other layers and slowly ripped the paper to reveal parts of the drawing underneath.
The top ravaged and torn paper buckled and hung off the drawing.
I decided to iron the layers. Warm pink-orange light reflecting off of the fir wood ceiling and walls is coming down into the room but we can get an idea of how it looks now that it has been pressed flat and is resting in the tile floor. I signed it.
I feel it is now complete even if I have no idea what I will do with it. I find works on paper hard to store and keep in an archive sense and even more challenging and expensive to frame. This is one of the reasons I seldom dude paper for anything but rough sketches in preparation for painting. But, maybe this will change. Working this way is like having my hands in the dirt of the garden. It is more immediate and tactile somehow than painting. This makes for stronger and fuller memories to use in my painting practice.
I am fascinated by the dramatic ability of this paper to reflect light. I move the paper work from the kitchen back to the art studio table.
The layers still do not really sit flat but the shadows from the folded back paper please me for their experimental impacts on the drawing underneath.
I will leave it on the table and give it a further think while I write up this post.
This making practice time, the work is as much about progressing through failed attempts as it about the work itself. I never know what might be useful in the future. However, I have come to understand that no efforts are wasted. It is now 2:00 pm on this Sunday afternoon and the breakfast dishes have waited for me. Gallery guests came and went before I could get out of my pyjamas to greet them. The gallery is walk in self-browsing so my greetings are not mandatory. I just like to do it if I can. David is up from his midday nap. The bedding needs to be put in the laundry and I still need to have a shower. That said, nothing has been permanently damaged from having disappeared into yet another creative idea.
IN OTHER NEWS
Our Wonderful Year Has Come To Close
Alas, the time has come to take a bow and move on to new adventures. The paintings and I would like to thank the Mayne Island Resort for inviting me to be their artist in residence over the past year. It is always a pleasure to put the paintings to work supporting a vision that is now becoming more fully developed. My thanks to Janice and Daryll for this opportunity and best wishes as they offer future art and artists opportunities. And to those who have enjoyed your time with these paintings, here is one last glimpse from the beginning. Enjoy!
I would like to include the thank you shared by the Mayne Island Resort on their FaceBook business page because closures are as important as openings:
A year in the life and times with our Artist In Residence Terrill Welch has come to a close. It was an honor and a privilege to have Terrill alongside us as our Artist In Residence with us these past twelve months and a delight to travel alongside Terrill's work that spoke to us daily from oceanside landmarks, to Arbutus adventures, from earthen and airy capsules to places to ponder and daydream. May Terrill's work continue to touch others in the way that they did us at Mayne Island Resort ⛵ 🌊. We will miss these smiling, storytelling bright landscapes and seaside treasures. Thankfully we are still within close proximity to visit The Terrill Welch Gallery and local shows throughout the island. We wish Terrill the very best on the journey of art and life. In paints and brushes, Janice & Daryll 🎨 💕
For the near future, I am looking forward to having these paintings available again to curate in the Terrill Welch Gallery Pod which is already busy for our next summer season. I am continuing to share more paintings at the Sunny Mayne Bakery Café and have an idea to share only Mayne Island paintings in both location this summer and ask viewers if they can guess the location that inspired each painting. There is also more shows in the works internationally with the Opulent Art Gallery. More on these adventures soon! With school in my MA in Fine Art starting again in June and still two Units by the end of July 2026, I am going to see if I can keep things low key for the next eight or so months. We shall see how successful I am at this. 😉
UNTIL NEXT TIME!
To say the least, these are definitely interesting times. Yet, I feel a strong sense that good will prevail. I listened to the full financial report recently from the Governor of the Bank of Canada and take our uncertainty and volatility to heart. At the same time, for some this will be a time of opportunity because they have been preparing, like us, for this situation since 2008. This is partly why I purchased the gallery pod instead of continuing to rent gallery space. This is why I front loaded student fees in savings from painting sales to be able go back to school to do my Master’s in Fine Art. This is why we did the renovation on our home during the early years of the pandemic to be able to age in place for as long as possible. Like many of you, we have prioritized what is most important to our well-being and quality of life. That said, purchasing original paintings are a luxury. They may lend themselves to fortifying our well-being but they remain a choice, like early season Canadian greenhouse grown strawberries and holidays in Europe. We can live without these savoured luxuries in our lives but, if they are within our means, life is so much more divine! Best of all, my original paintings do not mind if you just browse and take in what they have to offer either online or in the gallery pod. They thrive on being a borrowed view while they are waiting for a forever home. I love that about paintings! They are always up for a little extra attention. 😉
To conclude, your love and support as serious fans and art collectors over the years is always deeply appreciated. This is my moment to recognize and honour the time you have been looking over my shoulder in the art studio and out in field gathering references and through my newsletter and social media posts. This is my moment to pause and say thank you for all of your comments on posts, shares to your friends and family and acquaintances. This is my time to acknowledge all the private email letters of encouragement and reflection. This is for making the effort to find 428 Luff Rd. Mayne Island in your map and visit the Terrill Welch Gallery Pod. This is for the honour of having you take on the stewardship of one or many of my original paintings. You number in the thousands through these various connections in my artist’s life that is well lived. Thank you! Now, go have a browse. Choose a favourite painting or three! I would love to hear which ones resonate with you the most. It can be ones that have already slipped away to another art collector or ones in your own art collection or a new painting still waiting for its forever home. They all count in the category of our personal “favourites.”
And finally, about two hours from publishing this issue at 4:00 am Pacific Time, I was informed that I passed Unit 1 for my MA in Fine Art. I will begin Unit 2 in June!
With warm kindness and appreciation,
Terrill 👩🎨🎨❤️
Please do email tawelch@shaw.ca or call/text 1 250 744 4560 if you have any questions or specific requests.
And for my personal curated painting selection go to the link below…
Terrill Welch
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