Terrill Welch
Mayne Island, British Columbia
Contemporary Canadian Landscape Painter connecting art and nature one brushstroke at a time.
Message
Terrill Welch’s paintings are internationally collected. Her oil paintings and acrylic painting sketches have been shown in public and commercial spaces since the late 1990’s.
Terrill Welch has lived on Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada since 2007 and she began painting full-time in 2010.
Born in 1958 in the village of Vanderhoof in north-central British Columbia, Terrill Welch was invited into an adult painting class when she was fourteen years old. Terrill Welch has taken many college-level courses in drawing and painting and continues to pursue educational opportunities. For several years, she taught the art of oil painting from life in natural light, using water mixable or walnut oil paints. Today, she is focused on her studio painting practice and curates a small gallery space on Mayne Island.
Statement
I am a landscape painter connecting art and nature one brushstroke at a time.
My landscape paintings are internationally collected and predominantly consist of oil paintings, with a smaller number of acrylic sketches. Since the late 1990s, my work has been shown in both public and commercial spaces. I have completed and released over 500 paintings since 2010, with between 150 - 160 paintings currently available.
The brushstrokes in my paintings render the light, shadow, movement, smells, sounds, emotions, and events I experience in our natural world. My process begins with observing a place deeply, through direct observation, plein air painting, and photographic studies. This is followed by developing paintings that blend my imagination with these observations, often working wet into wet until the piece is completed in layers over several immersive studio days.
I am driven by a need to create bridges through my art between humanity and nature. My subjects are the surrounding landscapes I personally experience, captured in oil on canvas or linen over wood and acrylic on gessobord. These works aim to invite viewers to explore the relationship between the fundamental elements of our environment and ourselves. My intention is for viewers to find themselves within these landscapes, filled with curiosity, wonder, discovery, and a desire to survive.
These paintings are more than just depictions of nature; they are an invitation to pause and reflect on our innate connection with the environment. It is imperative to me that my work communicates the message that without our natural world and our capacity for compassion, we will cease to exist. This mission to strip away the illusion of our separation from nature is at the core of my work, including the Red Line Series, the Sea Floor and Seashell series and the Summer of Flowers series. Ensuring that this message reaches into the hearts of humanity is my sacred practice and my life's work in progress.