ABSTRACT: In this contextual study, Terrill Welch examines the reparative autoethnographic nature of her painting practice to determine how to best disseminate her body of work that is currently focused on the seafloor of Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada. She investigates why she paints what she paints through a data collection and analysis process. Her findings are primarily presented in relation to a single painting, ‘The Long Goodbye’. Additional paintings are presented to observe various combinations of figurative to abstract mark making and risk taking approaches. This contextual study will potentially be useful to viewers, art collectors, fellow artists and further practice-led research. Following thorough examination of her painting practice, from art production to art dissemination, Welch determines that her Seafloor series requires refined opportunities for audience engagement, methods of public presentation and sites of dissemination to best support text along with the paintings so as to reveal their reparative and autoethnographic nature.
Please note: ‘Disseminating A Nature-centric Reparative Painting Practice’ is an excerpt from a theoretical and research analysis and specific professional practice plan with the same title that was presented in full as a Contextual Study, along with other work, by Terrill Welch as part of her MA in Fine Art requirements in November 2025. All materials are copyright protected, in whole or part. Written permission is required, for use beyond professional and academic reference with appropriate credit/citation given to the artist and writer, Terrill Welch.
Figure 1 Viewing room using Canvy app with Terrill Welch’s paintings.
Table of Contents and Illustrations – index
Figure 1 Viewing room using Canvy app with Terrill Welch’s paintings.
Introduction
My Nature-centric Seafloor Reparative Painting Practice
Figure 2 ‘The Long Goodbye’ by Terrill Welch, 24 x 20 inch (61 x 51 cm) walnut oil on canvas. Completed Tuesday, 5 August 2025.
The ‘How’ of the Making of ‘The Long Goodbye’
Figure 3 Primary reference gathering for Long Goodbye painting on Thursday, 31 July 2025.
Figure 4 First day of painting process for ‘The Long Goodbye’. Monday, 4 August 2025.
The ‘Why’ of My Making Practice
My Troubled Relationship to this Land
A Living Figurative/Abstract Continuum Illustration
Figure 5 ‘Personal Continuum Illustration Landscape Figurative / Abstract’ by Terrill Welch.
Figure 6 ‘Sea Breeze’ by Terrill Welch 10 x 8 inch (25 x 20 cm) oil on linen board. Completed Sunday, 24 August 2025.
Figure 7 detail 2 ‘The Long Goodbye’ by Terrill Welch.
Figure 8 ‘Sea of Thoughts’ by Terrill Welch, 40 x 36 inch (101 x 91 cm) oil on canvas. Tuesday, 9 September 2025.
Dissemination, Peers and Networks
Minimizing Environmental Impacts
Identifying What is Visible and Invisible
Rural/Urban Borderlands
A Gendered Art World
Alternatives to a Commercial Focus
Imposed Constraints and Chosen Containment
Towards New Exhibition Opportunities
Peers and Networks
Who Collects Now and New Audience Directions
Conclusion
Reference List
Selected Bibliography
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Introduction
The seagulls scatter off the sandstone reefs as an eagle glides overhead bringing my eyes around to an eroding shoreline on (what is now called) Mayne Island in British Columbia, Canada. My public facing painting practice is intertwined, entangled, slightly tattered and diligently repaired by my relationship to this land that is my current compromised reference as home. In my contextual study, I consider the philosophical and ethical foundation of my painting practice that continues to sustain my clear-eyed resiliency and creative curiosity in new and developing ways.
I easily share the ‘how’ of my painting practice. The ‘why’ of what I do, has predominantly been kept purposefully opaque, until now. Through what Donna Haraway refers to in tentacular thinking as storytelling facts and fact telling (2016, p.31), I am using autoethnographic framework principles developed by Tony Adams (Adams, Ellis and Jones, 2013, 2022) and applied by Susan Crowley in her research presented in ‘Making Visible the Invisible’ (Crowley, 2022). I am investigating in a critical manner the reparative nature (Forrester, 2020) of my paintings that will potentially be useful to viewers, art collectors, fellow artists and further practice-led research. This new Seafloor series requires refined opportunities for audience engagement, methods of public presentation and sites of dissemination.
What, where and how do I present my contemporary figurative/abstract reparative paintings while creating and living on a small rural island off the southwest coast of Canada? If only viewing the finished artwork, my nature-centric paintings mostly keep their reparative practice developments invisible. This offers a real choice about how much of the inner workings of my creative practice and specific personal history to disclose to a public audience in support of the dissemination of this artwork. These new paintings, more than ever before, require a robust, carefully considered, in person and online public presentation plan. I must determine how and how much is necessary or desirable for me to share about why I paint what I do. I have weighed these disclosures against the possibilities of either strengthening or undermining the paintings and my credibility as a painter. In order to answer these audience engagement, presentation and dissemination risks and questions, I begin by analyzing the practice data collected during my reparative painting practice-led research through autoethnographic and nature-centric lenses.
I stay in the places that are uncomfortable as I straddle the rivers of values and borderland implications (Anzaldúa, 1987) between rural/urban communities, female/male gender access, nature/human competition and contentious Indigenous/white settler European land use and ownership challenges. I briefly acknowledge past abuse and traumas and the life affirming aspect of death, our own and other life on our planet. I mitigate personal privacy implications by focusing on the act of repairing, rather than on what caused the need for this reparative aspect, in my making practice. I focus my analysis primarily on one painting out of the body of work completed. I am keeping my feet pressed firmly against the changing tidal shorelines, revealing a specific past as it washes over an equally specific present moment while my eyes rest low to the horizon and search out future opportunities. I bring my personally identified historical and contemporary artists influences to bear as I review my current paintings, networks and relationships that can support and strengthen my constructed, interconnected and fluid understanding of being a critter-permeable-self existing interdependently with other critters and life forms within a nature-centric creative practice (Haraway, 2016, Oliver, 2020).
Between my practice and the testing of these new paintings in my own gallery, newsletter, social media posts and solo online international gallery exhibitions, I want to move forward by also seeking regional public gallery opportunities, pop-up events and ecological collaborations as new sites for presentation and engagement. These new opportunities may include text, talks or interviews using selected reparative aspects that are a foundational element in the creation of these nature-centric paintings. Beyond maintaining connections with current art collectors, a major task over the next five years will be to more substantially bring these paintings to the next generations of viewers and art collectors. Succeeding in this effort will mean aligning presentation and dissemination with the needs and desires of these audiences through meaningful experiences and continued online access.
My Nature-centric Seafloor Reparative Painting Practice
While rigorously investigating my whole practice, I primarily focus on the creation of ‘The Long Goodbye’ painting identified in Figure 2 for this contextual study.
Figure 2 ‘The Long Goodbye’ by Terrill Welch, 24 x 20 inch (61 x 51 cm) walnut oil on canvas. Completed Tuesday, 5 August 2025.
The initial primary data collection document for this painting is available in my art journal with partial inclusion in social media and newsletter posts (Welch 2025b, 2025i, 2025o, 2025k, 2025p). Two additional paintings are introduced as supporting examples to my analysis about mark making. The ‘research examining the affective power (as related to both painter and viewer) of painting within a specifically reparative framework remains greatly unconsidered’ (Forrester, 2020, p.73). As a whole, my autoethnographic research must fulfill four requirements including: purposefully commenting on culture and cultural practices; contribute to existing research; embrace vulnerability with purpose; and, create a reciprocal relationship with audiences in order to compel a response (Adam, Ellis and Jones, 2013, Crowley, 2022, p.177).
The ‘How’ of the Making of ‘The Long Goodbye’
Images and memories for this painting were gathered at (what is now called) Oyster Bay on the outer side of an islet around noon on the 17th of July 2025 and later on the 31st of July 2025. With these photographic references in Figure 3, I began developing the painting.
On Monday, 4 August 2025, following several preliminary steps, I worked at the easel between noon and just after 4:00 pm. Getting the blues, mixed greens and yellows the way I wanted them right from the start was important to me. The yellow of the seaweed and bronze marks in the water were put on with thick paint using a palette knife (Welch, 2025b).
Figure 4 First day of painting process for ‘The Long Goodbye’. Monday, 4 August 2025.
After 4 hours of standing at the easel, my body is fatigued and my painting problem-solving skills exhausted. I stopped painting but turned the easel so I could glance at it in the studio from where I was making dinner in the kitchen. I wanted to keep the mystery of my subject and yet capture the full sensory experience of smells, sounds and textures of looking into the fluid essence of the rippling tidal pool. The mark making must capture all of this to be successful and also work on an abstract level of shape, colour and texture. As the first viewer, I find that the painting does meet these self-imposed criteria (Welch, 2025b).
The ‘Why’ of My Making Practice
My hand that holds the brush or palette knife is neither neutral nor innocent. My left hand is the creative instrument for my whole body and mind and is compromised and shaped through a particular interconnected web of history, location, experiences, education and circumstances. Biases and assumptions intercept and influence the decisions behind every mark made on a surface and each preliminary impression and post presentation of my paintings. I am responsible in relation to my choice of subject matter, materials, methods of making with nature or ‘sympoesis’ and presentation, as a participant in a shared, intertwined and interconnected ecosystem (Haraway, 2016, Welch 2025e). I am unpacking, untangling and exploring these factors to discern ‘why’ I paint what I paint. Natalie Loveless asserts:
Research-creation, at its best, has the capacity to impact our social and material conditions, not by offering more facts, differently figured, but by finding ways, through aesthetic encounters and events, to persuade us to care and to care differently (Loveless, 2019, p.107).
This is what I mean to do with driving passion and authenticity.
The title ‘The Long Goodbye’ is frequently used in reference to living with someone who has dementia and experiencing how they slowly lose their ability to think, communicate and control their bodily functions. The loss is relentless in its grief and continuity, frequently taking years to complete its cycle towards death. This painting is about a similar process in relationship to our planet as it slowly loses its ability to support life. The scientific data and our own experiences record the planet’s physical changes. It is then up to each of us to find our emotional path while knowing we may not have the capacity to come to terms with what is before us. In my figurative/abstract rendering of this Salish Sea tidal pool, I have asked myself to brush, push, slide and scrap my way forward while letting go of any specific outcome, both for the canvas and for living in these beautiful broken moments (Welch 2025b, 2025i, 2025k, 2025o, 2025p).
My gathering of full body sensory information through photographic, video and memory references are done with the reparative intent to rebalance the raw edges of worry and concerns in my daily life. A significant human in my life is in cognitive decline that is ever-present in our daily interactions and my caregiving and guardianship tasks. I seek out the rhythm of the sea to calm these experiences while being aware of the impacts of recent dry weather and low tides on the shellfish in the tidal pool I am observing. Who is or isn’t providing guardianship for human life and all life on earth (Welch 2025b, 2025i, 2025k, 2025o, 2025p)?
My Troubled Relationship to this Land
When applying my situated knowledges ‘the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision’ (Haraway, 1991, p.190). Haraway is arguing for an embedded mind and body, a feminist objectivity that is ‘about the limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. In this way we might become answerable for what we learn how to see’ (Haraway, 1991, p.190, Welch, 2025e). This is powerful guidance for me as the painter-researcher who is also the researched in my artistic practice (Smith and Dean, 2009, p.51).
While this painting provides emotional comfort, it also reminds me of my responsibility to and accountability for my contributions towards all life. Also, as I look into this tidal pool, I remember that I am an uninvited visitor of colonial European ancestry on the lands of the Coast Salish People. Loveless offers a way to help keep this fact visible by adding ‘what is now called’ in brackets in front of the colonial name of a place (Loveless, 2019, p.29). This painting is representative of my experiences on (what is now called) Mayne Island. This simple shift questions the assumption of the island’s name from what it might have been in the past and leaves room for what it might become in the future.
In the 18 years I have lived on this island, reconciliation efforts have seen the inclusion of the SENĆOTEN language name for the island of S,KTAK (pronounced sq-THECK) in our island welcome brochure for (what is now call) Mayne Island (Mayne Island Chamber of Commerce, 2025). These acknowledgments leave, in foucauldian terms, ongoing room for reflexive communication and actions. As a practicing painter, I am continually reminded of my precarious, tenuous and complex relationship to this land under my feet. This uncomfortable place is where Haraway cautions to stay with the trouble (Haraway, 2016, p.5). The land and sea sustain my very life, for which I am grateful but it is in my actions that gratitude and care matter.
A Living Figurative/Abstract Continuum Illustration
I have created a personal continuum illustration of landscape figurative and abstract mark making. A first draft of this illustration appeared in my art journal as part of a presentation (Welch, 2025a). This illustration is my own inner defined positioning of my artwork made visible. There are challenges with this illustration. It doesn’t capture what goes beyond figurative and abstraction in creating a painting such as choice of materials, scale, and its development process. I am noting these aspects and leaving them unresolved in this illustration.
Figure 5 ‘Personal Continuum Illustration Landscape Figurative / Abstract’ by Terrill Welch.
I started developing this visual illustration with a line and put a yellow circle in the middle. Immediately above that line are two rows of my personally significant renaissance to modern art painters. The next line of artists are contemporary landscape painters that were selected by Todd Bradway in Landscape Painting Now published in 2019. Barry Schwabsy explains that the six themes in the book ‘do not constitute categories of painting or painters’ but rather ‘should be considered a distinct art-historically informed articulation of the metaphorical relationship between painting and landscape’ (Bradway et al., 2019, p. 25). The third and top line of artists are colleagues and peers, both those with whom I have a personal connection and others that I have observed online from a distance.
Below the line with the yellow circle, I have plotted my landscape painting practice with specific attention to my more recent Seafloor series. The lines in green represent those paintings that could be plotted on the renaissance and modern art period of the continuum. This isn’t necessarily a clean fit due to my specific ‘child’s view’ and ‘landscapes of the small’ perspectives. However, for the mark making itself, it works. The purple lines represent where I am leaning in my mark making. The purple x on the far right is there because it is something I continue to try, such as in the painting ‘Sea Breeze’ in Figure 6 below (Welch, 2025d, 2025g, 2025j, 2025o), and have yet to find a way into complete abstraction that still holds my visceral sense to place.
Figure 6 ‘Sea Breeze’ by Terrill Welch 10 x 8 inch (25 x 20 cm) oil on linen board. Completed Sunday, 24 August 2025.
The orange line represents something new that might possibly come after my current understanding of contemporary art. I want to see if I can, in a single painting, encompass this much of the mark making continuum.
I have self-assessed ‘The Long Goodbye’ painting on this continuum as a ‘contemporary 4.5 – 7’ (with 5 being impressionist and 10 being abstract mark making). An image detail below provides evidence for my subjective rating.
Figure 7 detail 2 ‘The Long Goodbye’ by Terrill Welch.
Whereas in Figure 6, ‘Sea Beeze’ is a fully abstract painting and sits comfortably as a ‘contemporary 10’ on this mark making continuum (Welch, 2025d). Another painting in Figure 8, ‘Sea of Thoughts’, explores the full range of the orange line on this continuum and receives a self-assessment of ‘contemporary 4-10’ (Welch, 2025c, 2025h, 2025j, 2025l, 2025n).
Figure 8 ‘Sea of Thoughts’ by Terrill Welch, 40 x 36 inch (101 x 91 cm) oil on canvas. Tuesday, 9 September 2025.
This figurative/abstract continuum illustration does more than assist me in critically reviewing my range of mark making. It also makes visible how I view my artwork within a western historical and contemporary art context. This continuum is a living document and it is not designed to provide a rigid reference. As I proceed, my self-assessment of past and new paintings will reasonably be revised based on new information and new experiences. I can visually see the impact of my passage through impressionism to more contemporary methods of mark making expression. My current paintings are an effort to expand my mark making while keeping this deep rooted making with nature tangible to my first viewer experience. So far, the painting ‘Sea of Thoughts’ in Figure 8 above is the most successful in my expanded mark making efforts. The breadth of mark making undertaken in this painting fulfills my first requirement of keeping me connected to my sense of place (Welch, 2025c).
Dissemination, Peers and Networks
My public dialogues with and about my paintings are continuous and diverse through multiple dissemination means. Currently, my paintings are represented in my own online gallery, on my website, through social media posts, a monthly newsletter, my own physical gallery and studio space, local venues and through an international online gallery on the large Artsy platform that is exclusively for galleries. Presentations of materials about an artwork have consistent elements that are then tailored to meet the interests of specific audiences. Through these various dissemination methods, I connect with a growing international audience and network of peers, art dealers and art collectors. From Europe to Indonesia to North America, these connections continue to develop over time through art exhibition calls, through the generous engagements with earlier adaptors to social platforms and through the marketing rhythms of sharing about my artistic practice.
Minimizing Environmental Impacts
A significant ethical consideration in my practice and art business is to minimize and reduce environmental impacts while still being able to create and share meaningful artwork. The following is not an exhaustive list of these tensions and it is something I continually revisit.
Wherever possible, in my creative process I use the best natural materials that will eventually return to the earth. I disrupt the landscape as little as possible by my presence when gathering references and plein air painting. On extremely rare occasions I have ‘borrowed’ a few shells from a shore to study in the studio and then returned them later. This doesn’t rest well with my conscience and is a practice I have discontinued because these materials contribute to the health of the seafloor and provide homes for other living critters.
To lower emissions, I prefer to ship paintings only once they are sold and primarily seek to participate in online shows, other than those within my regional driving capacity. I am strategic to minimize online posting in order to limit energy use for cloud storage. However, I do store over 60,000 references, art practice and photographic images.
These are a few of the complex decisions, actions and tensions I consider to reduce my practice and presentation impacts on the environment. The connections between my personal core values, the morals of societal standards and my professional practice ethics are interrelated into how I navigate my life, art practice and outward facing dissemination of my artwork. Ideally, all three of these aspects are in alignment and positively effluence each other. However, alignment is usually fleeting with ongoing rebalancing necessary to find equilibrium between conflicting values, morals and ethical considerations. Frequently, I must consider and reconsider how I might best be transparent about any conflicts and decisions that are made due to these dynamic considerations.
Identifying What is Visible and Invisible
My making is substantively reparative in theory and practice. However, this reparative turn frequently remains invisible without the inclusion of textual or interview information. According to Shannon Forrester’s research, this is common and she speaks to what we might be missing if the artwork is left to stand alone (Forrester, 2020). The abuses and experiences of violence I have endured are now far in my past. I have completed the necessary counseling and therapy to repair the damage caused by these traumas. My painting practice-led autoethnographic research is not about the specifics of these experiences but rather the ongoing nature-based healing maintenance required for me to live an emotionally healthy and resilient life. I have, for the most part, kept these vulnerabilities out of conscious view in my paintings during the past 15 years. Instead, I have used an observational breath-work approach to ground my painting practice. John Daido Loori’s zen theory and practice of creativity (Loori, 2005) is still valid and central to my practice methods, particularly as resistance to being overwhelmed by the impacts of past traumas and present losses (Welch, 2025f). However, observational breath-work can only reveal part of my research-creation story where earth and landscapes are my first, most consistent and lasting reparative love (Welch, 2025f) .
By using the autoethnographic methods, I can potentially uncover how my life experiences influence and impact my painting practice and decisions. People in any physical form ‘are missing in my paintings. Any reference to my experience of my gender is not overtly present’ (Welch, 2025a). My age and the whiteness of my skin and cultural identity as European Canadian are not evident in these paintings. I look for what is, at first, invisible in my painting practice by using the autoethnographic methods of ‘sensemaking processes’ (Adams, Ellis and Jones, 2022 p. 4). I am cautiously optimistic about creating autoethnographic textual information to accompany my paintings though ‘neither can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say’ (Foucault, 1994, p.9). The end goal is to, within relational and process ethical research requirements, such as privacy protection (Adams, Ellis and Jones, 2022, pp.6-7), present both in a way that leads to more than the painting or text could offer separately.
Rural/Urban Borderlands
In 2023, the geographic rural Canadian population was 18.14 percent of our total population (Globalen LLC, 2023). The definition of what is rural in Canada can vary but regardless of inconsistency in these definitions, it is safe to say that most Canadians live in towns and cities with a steady migration from rural areas having taken place since the 1960’s (Du Plessis et al., 2001). Developing a contemporary painting practice from this rural positioning requires addressing possible assumptions or risks about being uneducated or unworldly in comparison to my urban counterparts. However, having one set of rural education and skills doesn’t negate my acquisition of a proficient set of urban education and skills in order to function in our contemporary global society. From obtaining university degrees to using high speed internet and digital tools, as a rural contemporary artist, I am required to straddle, navigate and thrive in both of these cultural and geographic spaces. My chosen creative responsibilities are partially to keep my strong rural nature-centric relationship visible in my work in order to assist me in mitigating environmental impacts in the face of a global climate crisis that challenges both rural and urban daily lives. I am not alone in my positioning of humans as non-dominant critters amongst other critters. From Donna Haraway (1991, 2016), Maria Puig de La Bellacasa (2017) to Tom Oliver (2020) nature-centric theories, analysis, actions and governance are a critical consideration. While forest ecologist Suzanne Simard is Finding the Mother Tree (2021) and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer is Braiding SweetGrass (2013), I am developing an autoethnographic, reparative, nature-centric painting practice at the shoreline of the Salish Sea. These are philosophical, theoretical, ethical and valued spaces and places of research action through applied critical thinking and lived experiences providing necessary, relevant and new ways of engaging in rural/urban art and life. Within these entangled and complex experiences, I tend to lean more heavily into my rural education and skills for my making practices and into my urban education and skills to present this artwork to the world.
A Gendered Art World
When I am in the field researching and gathering reference materials and ideas and then later in the studio, my gender generally has an unremarkable impact on my painting practice. The land, sea and sky are indifferent about my being a woman. The brushes, paint and canvases have no gender preferences in their design or use. In these physical spaces, few personal attributes impact my relationship to my art practice. However, when I turn my gaze outward facing to presenting my artwork, then my gender becomes much more problematic and a point of continual negotiation with myself and others in relation to my paintings. How much do I identify as a woman in presenting my work? What is the impact on the artwork if I do or don’t?
Katy Hessel in her book The Story of Art without Men succinctly shares the statistical state of women’s art, from a 12% of monetary value at the highest price received at auction to a study in 2019 indicating that 87% of artworks from 18 major United States art museums were by men, while artwork by women make up only 1% of London’s National Gallery collection (Hessel, 2023, p.10). Hessel’s book makes a significant contribution to identifying women artists throughout history to the present. In her conclusion, she is far more optimistic for a future of fair inclusion of women artists than I find through my own experiences. Julia Halperin in her article ‘The 4 Glass Ceilings: How Women Get Stiffed at Every Stage of Their Career’ is frank about the ongoing impacts women artists face throughout their careers in an art market dominated by white men and that the ‘art market reflects broader biases both in the art world and in the real world. Until the bigger systems change, the market won’t either’ (Halperin, 2017). I review and monitor these realities frequently in order to make the best decisions about the dissemination of my artwork. The most pragmatic approach is to directly curate my artwork in the primary art market in ways that circumvent most of the worst biases impacting artists that are not white men. I have my own physical and online gallery spaces, newsletter, art collector records and I choose the artists and galleries who I collaborate with carefully. The risk with this approach is that it is likely harder to have my artwork reach the secondary market while I am still alive (or ever). It is also likely more challenging for some commercial galleries to consider entering into an agreement because the artwork is in a higher price bracket than other women artists that they represent. Since the statistical chances of success are not promising in either of these two areas, it seems a risk worth taking.
Alternatives to a Commercial Focus
From 2015 to 2024 my inventory records show that I have sold 235 of my original paintings for a total, after commissions, of $280,000 CAD for this one modest revenue stream — separate from teaching art classes, giving workshops or sales of reproductions and art related products. However, with a severe economic downturn possible in Canada due to a trade war with the United States, I anticipate fewer original painting sales in 2025, 2026, 2027 and possibly still in 2028 (Welch, 2025f). Other factors impacting potential growth are the threats of an expanded Russian war with NATO countries (Welch, 2025f). Therefore, my art business is in a maintenance, rather than growth, mindset that is then reflected in my future audience and dissemination plans. This cautious position is further supported in other art market research (Kazakina, 2025). In the immediate future, I am seeking opportunities where my art practice can proceed with less focus on sales and with increased attention to alternative engagement and dissemination methods.
Imposed Constraints and Chosen Containment
Imposed constraints, due to adult caregiving, limits my ability to travel or to be away from my home studio for more than a few hours at this time. This has led to choosing a landscape painting subject that I can easily access for my research purposes. I also chose a subject that is new to me within this familiar small island location. The seafloor at the tideline offers me its rhythms and reparative sensory renewal. I have developed a new way to experience the seafloor up close as ‘landscapes of the small’ and as a ‘child’s view’ for the intimacy these compositional perspectives and experiences offer. I have primarily chosen a vertical orientation for my surfaces as a way to disrupt the more commonly used horizontal orientation for landscape and seascape paintings. The vertical orientation forces me to think freshly and creatively about how I will use this seafloor space which I most often experienced as a horizontal expanse encompassing great distances. The ‘child’s view’ perspective of ‘The Long Goodbye’ and other paintings from this perspective might be suited to a low flat presentation where the viewer can look down on a painting while walking around its edges. For this presentation option, a public viewing risk assessment will be required for each exhibit space and the risks mitigated further by my ongoing art business liability insurance.
Towards New Exhibition Opportunities
From the 8th to 22nd of August 2025, the first half of my Seafloor series was presented as part of a solo exhibition with the Opulent Art Gallery on Artsy (Jenkins, 2025a). This is the first comprehensive international exhibition of my newest paintings and included not only a sponsored solo presentation in the Artsy viewing rooms but also an Opulent Art Gallery focused social media campaign, and a cover image and full feature interview in The Global Art Magazine (Jenkins, 2025b) . Strategic online opportunities like these are something I will continue to consider in the future.
Another area of dissemination for this new series is through small community public museum galleries and venues. This can include artist talks, an audio or video presentation that makes visible selected elements of the reparative nature of my painting practice. Though I have limitations on the amount of national and international travel or shipping of artwork I can do, I am confident that I will be able to say ‘yes’ to at least some of these artist calls and opportunities over the next five years. In addition, as a curator representing my own artwork, I can seek in person and online opportunities for non-traditional pop-up exhibitions in community and public spaces either as a solo artist or in collaboration with other artists or ecological disciplines.
Peers and Networks
My artistic peers and art related networks have been maintained and renewed over the length of my career. I will continue to engage in two artist online shows such as with Annerose Georgeson — ‘Between Branches – our being with trees’ (Welch, 2021). I have ongoing connections with artist colleagues like Elena Maslova Levin in California, United States. We have hosted art talks and shown our work together in my physical gallery — “Earth and Water: Conversations on Edge” (Maslova Levin, 2018). I engage in meaningful social media conversations with artist and author David Sandum in Norway, food photographer and fashion designer Wulan Whozly in Indonesia and established Canadian painters John F. Marok, and Holly Friesen in Montreal. These are just a few of the individuals who continue to provide meaningful engagement within my painting practice. Locally, I belong to the Southern Gulf Islands Art Council and the local chamber of commerce. In the future, I propose developing stronger peer and networking ties in the two largest cities, in (what are now called) Vancouver and Victoria, situated on each side of (what is now called) Mayne Island. I have many art collectors living in these cities but fewer established artist and gallery connections.
Who Collects Now and New Audience Directions
In reviewing my inventory records for the Professional/Personal Practice Plan (Welch, 2025f), of the art collectors who purchased my work between 2015 and 2024, the primary purchasers were 30% male and 70% female. From known information and visual assessment, about 22% of these individuals were under the age of 50 years old. Though international and national sales are significant, the majority of sales are to art collectors living off of our rural island but within (what is now called) British Columbia, Canada. What many of these art collectors have in common is a combined passion for nature and paintings. There are frequently shared values with me and between each other around environmental practices, sustainability and eco-friendly living. Going forward, the interests of these individuals continue to be my ideal art collectors with a stronger emphasis on connecting with the next generations of younger collectors. These younger art collectors frequently ask me about smaller pieces and reproduction prints. They are more likely to purchase online and favour experience-driven art (Consilvio, 2025). They are keenly interested in the story behind the art. The paintings are much more than an object to acquire:
Rather than transactional collecting, younger buyers seek ongoing relationships with artists and galleries, often supporting careers over multiple years. This relationship-building approach creates more stable artist careers and deeper cultural engagement than traditional collecting patterns (Mitchell, 2025).
In frequent conversations with art collectors about my paintings, I’ve learned that they view the work as a thoughtful contribution to the quality of their lives. These art collectors cross generational boundaries and contribute to my desire to continue curating and representing my own artwork in the future.
Conclusion
By placing my painting practice-led research within a historically specific framework and identifying the impact of my situated knowledges, as an earthly terrestrial, or critter, I am rigorously examining and questioning a continuum of mark making between figurative and abstraction in relation to my study of a specific place and the seafloor at the tideline. Using various observation materials and methods, I then paint on a surface in a manner that most fully speaks to my making with nature, through an ongoing imagined conversation with this land. My aim in this Seafloor series is to connect with nature’s quiet yet profound rhythms, offering a visual meditation on the resilience and grace I experience along these shorelines. I continue to answer the question — what is this land, sea and sky telling me? I explore how I can expand my language of mark making beyond what I see to more fully and abstractly communicate my whole sensory mind and body experience of this specific place. I have investigated who I am now in relation to this place. I have identified why my artist-nature conversations in paint matter. I have discerned that the autobiographical elements discovered within my painting practice are often of an ongoing reparative nature. I have confirmed that I prefer to be a terrestrial critter in an interconnected and entangled relationship with nature, and all of her nurturing and destructive powers, than anywhere else. These are the primary concerns that then impact how, when, where and why the artwork is disseminated. A creative practice is never this unencumbered though is it? Though I live in a rural setting in an earth-friendly strawbale, timberframe home, I still have many of the comforts of urban living such as hydro electricity, refrigeration and high speed internet. I am selling my paintings within a capitalist system where most of my art collectors are urban dwellers, out of necessity or preference. These complexities and tensions abound if I am willing to critically consider them. This more rare, purposeful relationship of making with nature requires creative strategies for success, and possibly a redefinition of success, that is focused on living in sustainable harmony with all living things whereby the paintings are reminders of this imperative practice.
The thinking of Donna Haraway has taken me deeper into my painting practice. This then expanded into researching new methodologies that also support my critical thinking and developing observations. I have been unraveling the interconnectedness and entanglement of my terrestrial critter that is making with nature (or sympoiesis) through my painting practice. Reparative painting theory is an apt way to frame my all consuming obsession with my nature partner in repairing and challenging the damage from othering that happens obvertly, covertly, unnoticed and personally in ways that leaves scars and survival skills worthy of careful consideration. Reparative painting theory offers a gateway into the frequent melancholy that I often recognized as an underlying vibration in my paintings, no matter how benevolent and beautiful my subject is rendered. I also want to highlight the importance of artist studio and painting process documentation in order for me to access a fuller understanding of the ‘why’ of what is left behind as art.
I have learned there are no heroic positions or actions to occupy. Each brush mark, each idea for a painting is compromised in multiple ways. I cannot change this but I can acknowledge, untangle, examine, reflect and be reflexive about my art practice and where, how and to whom it is presented. I can ethically decide how the artwork is documented, curated and disseminated into the world. Then I must let go and release the paintings and their circumstances to occupy spaces and places beyond my knowledge or influence.
(Note: Discover more about each of Terrill Welch’s paintings in her ‘Seafloor and Seashell Series’ in the gallery’s online collection at: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/terrill-welch/collection/seashell-paintings .)
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