Terrill Welch by herself - Issue #4 Arbutus Tree Company and Rough Seas
My outer and inner worlds seem to be mirroring each other these past few weeks. Turbulent and unsettled with smatterings of loveliness pretty much sums things up. I was telling a friend that I felt like I was inside an oak barrel being tossed on a rough sea and forced to swallow salty brine for a couple of weeks. Better now though! The weather and my digestive system that had gone under attack from a bad bout of the stomach flu have both improved. The most recent dental work has a shiny new gold crown in place and hopefully no more cracked teeth for a long while. All of these trials are of short duration and I am confident we have some smoother sailing on the horizon. In this issue we will start with the latest Arbutus tree painting. I am personally rather fond of it. Then I want to take you on some rough seas with me and explore how they have become a sought out pattern in my life and painting practice. Finally, I will weave this together in a story about family, friends, neighbours and endurance. Let’s start with the new painting!
ARBUTUS TREE COMPANY
My passion and love of trees, particularly Arbutus trees, is obvious. I will likely never get enough of painting trees. Trees were some of my very first painting subjects in my early teens. Trees are just extremely good company. As I am writing this I can look out the window to my left and see a big old Alder spread wide and taking up space next to the Firs where an Arbutus twists its way up to the sun in between. Out of the windows in front of me and to the right, large Firs dominate the view and filter the sun even with an open south exposure. This is my favourite place to be and I seldom feel the need to paint it. I simply live within it each day. But when I go hiking and exploring I am always on the look out for a great tree or group of trees! Then it is necessary to decide on the best light and conditions to give them their most favourable presence in a work. Sometimes this takes years of observation, study and endless patience. Then everything lines up and I have what I need... like for this next painting...
Artist notes: If one is to be strolling back from Saint John Point in the early morning, the Arbutus trees are good company.
This painting will be available exclusively for “Terrill Welch by herself” subscribers for one week, until Friday March 24th, and then it will be publicly listed and shared.
Room view - “Arbutus Tree Company” by Terrill Welch....
REEF BAY AFTERNOON
Yesterday was gorgeous and warm at Reef Bay when we had a breakfast picnic so I went back with my plein air painting gear to finish up a painting I started plein on the same shore back in October of last year. I was never quite satisfied with it and it was never released.
I decided that the tide was about the same as the first day I was painting and I would combine the best of the two days. It worked.
Artist notes: Recipe for tranquil seaside painting - Take a calm warm October afternoon, one linen board, one larger round paintbrush, a few oil pigments on a palette and an French Box easel to the shore. Organize all ingredients in a leisurely fashion without thinking about it too much. Stand and step back several times while waving paint onto the canvas then walk away. Done! Or maybe not. Another tranquil afternoon five months later in March was needed to finally finish the work.
A very final photograph is still needed but I wanted to give "Terrill Welch by herself" subscribers first chance to purchase until Monday when this painting will go into the next Terrill Welch Gallery Pod show.
ROUGH SEAS
I absolutely love a good rough sea with is electric energy field - from shore! On the water, my sea legs buckle and my complexion turns green soon after the waters start to really roll. However, with my feet firmly gripping a rocky or sandy shore, I am good and will hoop with delight. We recently had some of this kind of weather that I shared in the closing of the last "A Brush with Life" issue #123 and it always brings back all the times before. I made a promise then to share more on this topic with you here. So let's go...
What is it about rough seas that has me painting them repeatedly even though several art collectors have told me these paintings are not for them? The feedback comes in various forms of "No, I couldn’t live with that painting. I would likely drown in its daily presence!"
Once when I had a large seascape being hosted by an avid art collector, she asked me to come get it. She told me that she loved the painting but had been avoiding her living room because she felt wobbly and off balance walking acrosss the room towards the painting, particularly first thing in the morning.
After this experience, the painting's listing had a warning and wasn’t sold without a trial hanging to make sure the new steward of the work could handle its power. Such an art collector was eventually found.
This painting absolutely thrives in a loud, rough and tumble home. It is neither too much nor too little. In fact, a new stuffed chair-and-a-half in that deep midnight blue has now been added to the room where the table is at the photograph above.
Other art collectors seek out these paintings to add to their collection.
They watch hopefully when they see I have a new batch of references to choose from for new rough seas paintings.
Then, on other occasions, someone commissions the work they want. I think the brief was - a breaking wave with snow on the mountains behind in morning light.
I have had sailboat sailors who have spent years sailing around the world tell me with deep reverence that I have captured the heart and energy of the sea.
I frequently get feedback like “I can hear the waves and feel the splash of the mist on my skin.” Sometimes, people will share that it feels cold or windy. I have had an executive for a tanker company seek out one of my very early plein air seascape paintings because he said “the sea often feels just like this!”
In reviewing these comments I have noticed that most people do not talk about how the paintings “look” like the sea. Instead it is all about how these seascape paintings affect their memories of how the sea feels and how it sounds and smells.
Sometimes I get asks how I am able to paint the sea like I do. I just smile and say, I become the sea and let my brush do the rest. This is mostly true... following hours and hours and years of studying the sea in its many forms.
A rough sea is an alive sea. It has power, volume, weight and weightlessness all at once as it is forced into ever-changing forms that are driven from below and above. To successfully paint a rough sea, the painter must understand that they are not painting just the surface of the water but all the way from the depths of the sea floor right up to where that floor becomes exposed shore and then on up to the sky and the pull of the moon above. If the painter can hold this whole breadth of spacial interaction along with the light and shadows of our sun or moon, during a specific and unique day, then, and likely only then, will that sea truly breathe freely on the canvas by itself.
As an observer, it would be a fair question to ask - how is this possible? How do you do this?
The answer is to study the sea in its many phases and understand what is on the sea floor and what it is like when the winds are going one way or another with or against the tides. This means studying the sea on quiet days as well as rough sea days. It means having spent so much time on the shores that I feel like I am part of the sea. I know where the sun is now and where it will be in an hour. I can make a pretty good guess using references and a compass where and when the moon will rise and what phase it is in.
Once I have gathered my references through plein air painting sketches or photographs (and sometimes both), I can then bring these into the painting studio and pull out a larger canvas or even a really large canvas. From this place I set myself to be being the sea as I form brush stroke after brushstroke in its rhythm and fullness on that specific day. I do not think of details but rather the wholeness of each movement which does not come from my hand or wrist or arm but the core centre of my being that is rooted between the centre of the earth and the universe, just like the sea.
The painting above did a longish trial hanging shortly after it was painted. However, in the end it just wasn't quite the right fit. Now the painting is back at the gallery and is ready to seek new possibilities. I will show this work in the next Terrill Welch Gallery Pod exhibition along with other seascape paintings.
If you have enjoyed this article about how I paint the sea, feel free to let me know and I will do more articles like this one in the future.
LETTING GO OF THE SKY PAINTING PROCESS
You will likely remember the first painting completed this year called "Letting Go of the Sky." What you don't know is that I took the time to record a few sections of the painting process and now have it pulled together in a video just over 8 minutes long. I will share it elsewhere eventually and it is public on my Youtube channel so you can share it with others as well. However, I wanted to share it here first. It just seems like a perk that should come with your paid subscription, yes? Anyway, enjoy!
These snippets of my studio process are for my art collectors and serious fans of my work rather than a teaching tool for learning to paint. It is a record of my personal relationship to my subject and my painting process. You can learn more about this painting at the link below...
CREATIVE REST
I continue to get us both sorted after our bad bout of stomach flu in between two trips to the Victoria for dental work. This past week life is starting to look slightly more defined than this Salish Heron ferry through the windshield of our car at the Swartz Bay ferry terminal.
However, we are mended! Feeling a little like a couple gladiators defeating an invisible monster, we know the sun will shine again. Plus, we have great neighbours and friends who came to our rescue when things started to seem a little impossible.
When I was sick first, it meant we could go get nothing because I am the only one that can drive. A neighbour checked in about something else and asked if they could pick us up anything. Ginger Ale I said. A couple of hours later I was sent a text that it was on our doorstep. I go and look and then laughed out loud even though I was feeling miserable.
There was a very lovely note in the card.
I was fortified both emotionally and physically. How kind!
Other neighbours and friends checked in and offered to help with whatever was needed as well. It was a great reminder that we are often not as alone as we think we are… but we have to allow others in and graciously, with humility, accept the gifts they offer. The second half of this equation is the hardest for me. I am not interested in any additional opportunities to practice either!
These are the most obvious kinds of moments for a creative rest. Just like our bodies need to rest and recover after an illness so do our creative muscles. I have learned to be creatively gentle with myself during these period of convalescence.
I am starting to think a little beyond the paper work that has been gathered up for the account to do yearend and file our income tax. This is definitely an noncreative task that I worked on ahead of our second trip to finish the dental work.
New painting ideas are surfacing in the corners of my eyes but dissolve if I turn to look at them squarely. They are only lurking at the moment. I was not quite ready to get chilled plein air painting just yet. But then the weather warmed up yesterday and out I went! Maybe I can encourage these lurkers by painting a few grounds on some of my available canvases? We shall see.
There are a couple of jury art shows I need to decide if I want to submit work. The quick answer is I will likely give them a miss. There was this newsletter issue to finish for today’s publication. I got it mostly done ahead of schedule between many loads of laundry and scrubbing, bleaching, warming chicken soup broth and flattening ginger ale while remembering to take rest breaks. I did it not by diving head long into the task but by capturing and using short increments of time... and I did do it!
Life is good. Even though I am still a little low on energy, each day is better than the previous day.
LEARNING A NEW CREATIVE LANGUAGE - LINO CUTTING AND PRINTING
Every creative method has its own tools which often requires learning a new language along with how to use them. On Wednesday, I immersed myself into the world of negative and positive space, soft blocks, lino cutters, brayers, barens, water-based inks, and acid free printing paper.
I had picked up two starter kits for lino cutting and printing a few weeks ago and I saved them as a celebration exercise for the day after I handed in the art business yearend paperwork to the accountant so that our income tax could be done. I didn’t want to invest too much in this new creative method until I could decide if I was going to enjoy the process or not. Well, I sure had fun with my forst attempt! This is my first-ever-since-high-school lino cut print using a soft block which feels a little like an eraser that doesn’t crumble.
And we have a print! I still need to press it flat but it is definitely a print on 7 x 5 inch acid free printing paper.
I ended up with five lino ink prints that are drying on the windowsill before I press them.
And four trial attempts in the discard pile.
I will likely use this block to print more but I want to make some minor chances to clean up some of the “noise” (these are places that have marks that are picking up ink that if taken out would strengthen the end result). I want some of this noise in the water and it will stay. The rest will go.
Anyway, “Terrill Welch by herself” paid subscribers are the first to get even a glimpse of this new creative adventure. I am not sure it will stick but it might. I will always paint. However, sometimes it is nice to use a different approach to express an idea. In theory, the skills and creative processes between painting and lino cut printing should compliment and strengthen each other.
What do you think?
With this, I shall close off for another issue.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Imagine! The next time I write to you for “Terrill Welch by herself” it will be Friday April 21st and Easter will have come and gone along with the Made on Mayne Spring Tour. The Japanese Garden will be covered in blossoms and we will be starting to plant a few things in our gardens here on the southwest coast of Canada. I have no clues or hints yet about what will be in the next issue. I trust something interesting will develop though because it always does.
All the very best as always!
Terrill 🎨❤
P.s. feel free to leave a comment by opening this issue in your browser or write to me directly at tawelch@shaw.ca as you wish.
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