Terrill Welch by herself - issue #47 Paintings as Everyday Use Objects
Refreshing and adding new work to gallery spaces has been the theme of activity over the past week. There are three new paintings added to the Opulent Art Gallery on Artsy, two new paintings hung in the Terrill Welch Gallery and the five smaller paintings have been replaced in the Sunny Mayne Bakery Café! I have been painting edges and hiking trails and starting a new work at the easel while preparing for an online Meet The Artist event that will take place in September. In between, the garden is being watered, plans are being formulated for family and friends to visit and summer reading is underway. Let’s begin by having a look at what has been added to the various show spaces via sharing direct links with you.
The Opulent Art Gallery, that represents my work internationally through the Artsy platform, was pleased to receive new piece that can be viewed at:
https://www.artsy.net/artist/terrill-welch
The Terrill Welch Gallery continues to feature my recent Seafloor series which is now such a large collection that it cannot be all shown at once in the gallery pod. But these latest two on the back wall now have their edges painted and are looking quite pleased with themselves.
You can also browse through everything that is currently in the gallery at:
https://www.artworkarchive.com/rooms/terrill-welch/59ce84
And finally, the smaller paintings in the Sunny Mayne Bakery Café are holding new conversations on the walls.
The full online viewing is available at:
https://www.artworkarchive.com/rooms/terrill-welch/0bd49a?view=artworks
WHAT I AM READING
Can paintings have an everyday use, like a hand turned pottery mug or a hand knit sweater? The Japanese philosopher, art historian, aesthete and poet, Soetsu Yanagi (1889 - 1961), proposes that true beauty does not come from straining to be remarkable. It comes from a kind of forgetting. Mingei or “crafts of the people”, is used to describe an approach and an object that “must be wholesomely and honestly made for practical use” (Yanagi, 2019, p. 5). These objects have been made without a need to be special or important and without grasping for attention. Further, the objects grow in beauty by their daily use. They are objects that have been made well and keep us company as we move through our ordinary lives. Yanagi in his book The Beauty of Everyday Things is speaking about anonymous folk craft and something that is different from what we understand as aristocratic contemporary fine art. However, I want to consider how my paintings might be and most often are acquired for their use value — not for decoration, not for spectacle or status, but rather for daily company. This daily company is of course the underlying practice in which my brush touched the canvas in the first place. The paintings are the result of my conversation with nature that then invites the viewer into these exchanges. Skill, practice and the quality of the materials matter, just like they do for the craft worker making a mug or weaving a basket. The works are not about being unique, though this over time happens without this being the intent. I mostly want to examine how a painting, as a crafted object, has a use value in our ordinary day, beyond an exploration of an idea that would lend itself to being considered contemporary art which, for the most part, is less interested in skill mastery or material quality. More importantly, can a painting hold both these philosophical and practical frameworks at the same time - humble usefulness for daily company and the successful exploration of a unique idea or concept? These are the questions I am asking as I read, while knowing that my work does not have a physical use, it definitely is not anonymous, and often it is not, broadly speaking, unique enough to fit easily into contemporary art sensibilities (presuming contemporary art can genuinely claim such a thing as sensibility). Feel free to join me if you wish as I attempt to answer these questions while reading Yanagi’s book.
Reference list:
Yanagi, S. (2019). The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Books.
WHAT I AM WATCHING
In contrast to Soetsu Yanagi’s Mengei or anonymous folk art, large architectural structures often have a clear lead individual who works with a team of other architects to meet the needs of a client which can also include the larger community who will later access the structure… and many more, including the builders, to fulfill a vision. Lina Ghotmeh is an architect who was born in Beirut, Lebanon during the war and drew as a way of processing her daily circumstances. She deliberately connects the history of a place to a future structure as a way of healing and moving forward. Her next project is to reimagine the British Museum in England. I won’t share anymore and will let you discover some of her past projects such as the Estonian National Museum In this BBC Global clip.
UNTIL NEXT FRIDAY
I can feel the full release now from months of structured and focused work. There is something to be said about relishing a lazy stretch and deciding the most important thing to do next is to make another cup of tea and sit on the deck. Don’t get me wrong. There is still lots to get done. It just doesn’t have to be completed within that one specific time slot that I had allocated for it. Edges are still getting painted. Appointments for teeth cleaning and eye check ups and car servicing are still getting booked. But there is time.
There is time to stare off into the trees and think, or not think, as I choose. I treasure this flexibility after a stretch of structured endurance. Life’s impermanence comes with frequent reminders, such as the abrupt negative health turn for one of my closest friends. It reminds me to speak out loud and share in demonstrative ways my love for those who are within my most inner circle. So my wish is that you share with those who you love how much that you love them in a way that is meaningful to you both!
Warm regards,
Terrill 🤗❤️🎨
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