August 27, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

4 pm: a case of stonewall kitchen tangerine marmelade is delivered. PLUS: it ain't much, but the first brush strokes have happened on parade 51, and i'm excited! PLUS: i never paint with one of my watches on, but it happened today. it's a vintage 1992 swatch automatic with a grey buffalo strap made by b18 in france, which i keep here in the studio above my iMac screen..

2:49 pm: here's the stretched canvas with the red pencil drawing

2:01 pm: just completed stretching the canvas, but the storm clouds are rolling in and it's becoming too dark to paint, plus it's kind of late in the day to start painting. i'll decide in the next 15 minutes, whether i get started today or wait till tomorrow. we had a google hangout with our IT team for actionlab at 12:30, which also threw a wrench into plans to start parade 51 today. i'll post a pic of the stretched canvas with the drawing, as always in rembrandt's pompejan red pencil. and i ihaven't forgotten about getting back to my earlier comments on homer.

10:20 am: in homer's odyssey, there is a dramatic economy of words in the homeric greek when compared with the modern greek translation. i have a 6 volume edition with homeric on one side of the page & modern on the other. since i read modern greek, i can more or less figure out the homeric, although it takes time. i'll talk more about this later; right now i'm anxious to go paint. in the mean time, have a look at the example below. i've made a notation of the number of words in each case, and the section i'm referring to is bracketed in pencil. the modern greek version is on the left; the homeric on the right.

9:04 am: more monsoonal weather, with these early morning clouds suggesting possible afternoon storms. on the left, the view from the entrance to our house looking east; on the right, looking south, with mt. blanca in the background, about a mile into our walk.

this morning i'll stretch the 35x56" canvas for parade 51, which will draw form a photo i shot from above at the space gallery opening on july 31.

morning skies / preparing for parade 51 / a handsome devil / / August 26, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

8:12 pm: no internet until now, and it's still spotty. after i completed the drawing, these big thunderstorm cells arrived from the west. the skies darkened, torrential driving rain, temperatures dropped. we are the blue dot on this map.

I'll stretch the canvas and start the painting tomorrow. as i made the drawing, i was looking hard at the large sculpture to the left of the 3 figures. i fell in love with it's colors and patterns. it may be the emotional focus that sustains my energy through the process.

11:25 am: so this is not the photo i'll be drawing from for parade 51, but it was taken the same evening, at the space gallery opening on july 31st.

cool space, don't you think?

11:08 am: upon entering my studio a few minutes ago, this is what i saw: the just completed parade 50, and hanging next to it, the recently completed parade 49. "handsome devils," i thought. not an expression i use. so who said that? did i have a sense8 moment? we did watch episode 8 (again) last night.

8:24 am: our internet is down, so this might not post. beautiful skies this morning as we took our walk. heading to the studio in an hour or so to make the drawing for parade 51 and stretch the 35x56" canvas. on the right, a veiw of spanish meadow as we walked our 2.2 miles this morning.

final-final parade 50 tweaks / crestone peak on bedroom wall / a longer walk / allergy relief / prep for parade 51 / August 25, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

5:15 pm: i found the image parade 51 will be based on. it's a photo i shot at a space gallery opening on july 31. tomorrow i'll create the drawing on the 35x56" linen, stretch it and beready to start painting thursday morning. space is a very beautiful contemporary open design with metal stairs leading uo to an upstairs gallery. that's where i was when i shot this photograph. what really sealed the deal and set this one apart from the 20 or so i shot that night is the reflection of one of the paintings in the floor. more tomorrow. right now, while mikela makes lentil soup, i'm moving on with my proofing of the actionlab curriculum. i'm working on a chapter titled find the story, and i completed one this morning titled visibility. although these are exercises designed for middle and high school kids, i'm getting tremendous value from them.

FINAL-FINAL TWEAK

1:03 pm: a little while ago in re-examining parade 50, i found a few areas that needed work. so i did some final-final tweaks. this afternoon it will be walked over to the house and hung in our entryway, where we can gaze at it every day & give it the final seal of approval as a completed painting.

this painting of crestone peak as seen from our deck was sitting for months with other paintings in a corner of our bedroom. yesterday i hung it on the east wall of the bedroom. i used to have a dim view of this painting, which was done in about 1999, but i'm appreciating it now that it's hung. painted in oil on linen, it's about 28"x40"."

11:42 am: we extended our walk to 45 minutes this morning. we walk parallel to the beautiful spanish meadow the entire way. today, as has been the case for the past week or so, the visibility was severly limited by the haze from the numerous wild fires burning out of control in neighboring states, as far away was washington and alaska.

we are still plagued by persistant allergies, far worse this season due to the record breaking rains. this morning a little before 6, just before setting out for our walk, i remembered the formula put together by lillian of green earth farms in saguache, across the valley, half an hour away. i knew i had a bottle from last season, and when i searched my medicine cabinet, there it was! i put a dropper full under my tongue and felt relief 5 minutes into our walk! I'm about to take another dose, the second of the 2-3 a day she recommends.

yesterday i made myself a really delicious omelette here in the studio. i sauteed veggie sausage & baked potatoes from the previous night, added fresh garlic & doused the whole thing with yinyang ot sauce, which has organic ingredients & is made in small batches in boulder, co., 4 hours from here. the bread is toasted prussian rye, which we hot at whole foods on our last trip to denver. the jam is my favorite: tangerine marmalade by stone creek farms of york, maine.

but i procrastinate: what will the next painting in the parade series be? stay tuned; i'm searching through my images. in the mean time, this next 56x35" painting will use up the remainder of my artfix portrait linen, so it's time to order another roll.

tweakingday / plein air soon? / August 24, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

3:28 pm: so here's parade 50 at the end of my painitng day. it came alive, as mikela commented a few minutes ago. and that's what tweaking is for. i'll see how it hits me when i walk in tomorrow morning. the passage in the detail on the left is what i'm calling the infernal machine. it's a sculpture at the denver museum of art, where the image for this painting was shot a few months back. i didn't approach to see who the artist is, but it does look like an infernal machine, and the artist has certainly looked at dada and surrealist versions from the early 20th c. it's got a few oars resting aainst it, a broom, two huge tires and an off white globe that could pass for a mildly deflated wrecking ball, if wrecking balls were deflatable.

parade 50  56x35"  oil on portrait linen as it looked at 3:15 pm today — *parade 50* 56x35" oil on portrait linen as it looked at 3:15 pm today

12:38 pm: today is devoted to tweaking. makes ALL the difference, tweaking. and not just in painting!

BACK TO THE CREEK

mosquito season has ended. afternoon monsoonal storms are diminishing. so when will i venture back to north crestone creek, where my rock buddies lie waiting? we talked this morning about possibly wandering up there this afternoon. i'm feeling the urge. we'll decide a bit later. there may be more storms this afternoon.....mikela just came by. "it came alive" was her comment. exactly what i needed to hear!

i'm cooked. still plagued by allergies, eyes itching. so i'll photograph this guy, post her, then stop by linde & lito's to see a cool backup system, something i desperately need, and an 8x8" book he says can be produced for very little,which could come in handy for my upcoming show. then we might go out to elephant cloud for some romaine. come back, cook & crash. no energy for a walk up the creek. but it's coming in the next few days...

continuing work on parade 50 / August 23, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

8:32 pm: MUST WATCH:

4 pm: i painted until just now, and there's still an area in the middle between the two wheels that's incomplete. so i'll save that for tomorrow morning, when i'm fresh.

BELOW: 2 details of parade 50. this painting has a quality none of the others in the series have. a softness. and a sense of the space that really does make you feel that you're suspended above the painting looking down, feeling a bit of vertigo. in addition, i think it probably shows the controversial denver museum of art's architecture in the best possible light. there are no 90 degree angles; not the ideal space for showing paintings. but from this perspective, it works.

12:09 pm: making good progress; the space is gaining in coherence rapidly, and the stairs on the left will kick it into perspective and add richness. the tweaking, either late today or tomorrow morning, will be especially important in this painting. like the final tuning of a fine instrument, it will make the difference and allow it to sing. and that, after all, is the whole point, isn't it?

if you're wondering about the painting partially visible on the studio wall, it was made in 1979 in athens, and is a series of 4 paintings in oil on canvas mounted on board. it's a fisherman on the island of andros telling the story of a miracle that happened when he was a child in asia minor. movies were a new thing then, and the new movie theatre, a wooden structure was packed with parents who had brought their kids to see a film. half way through the film broke and they couldn't repair it. so everybody filed out, deeply dissapointed. when the last person was out, the wooden building burst into flames and burnt to the ground in under an hour. they were saved, said the fisherman, by the protectress of their town, the panaghia, or virgin mary as we know her.

10:36am: just arrived in my studio and am able to view parade 50 with fresh eyes, since i was not in my studio yesterday. looking good, but there's still quite a lot of work to be done. work? did i say work? no, no....this is not work. i don't really know what to call it. just painting i guess. here are a couple of details of the painting as it looks right now. i'll post more pics as i continue painting. the dog sculptures in the foreground are challenging to paint. if i have a good day, i could actually complete this one by this afternoon.....

on the RIGHT: a photo of me shot by a french photographer in NYC in the late '80's,

last night's dinner / some reflections on reflections / colorado corn & peaches / August 22, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

8:30 pm: MUST WATCH:

8:43 am: last night we were invited to dinner at the home of a crestone couple who have been good friends for years. also invited were another couple, also friends for years, who are photographers and book publishers. they live in crestone half the year and in a remote location on a glacial lake in patagonia the other half.

the food, as laways at our friends bill & judy's home, was excellent. the main course, was alaskan salmon, cooked to perfection on bill's outdoor grill; crispy on the outside and perfectly cooked to medium rare. after dinner, bill broke out 5 or 6 of his favorite liqueurs and 2 bottles of single malt. normally, i don't drink alcohol except for my 1 beer with dinner every night. so i don't know what possessed me to drink 3 shot glasses of liqueur and one of single malt scotch. i woke up this morning feeling pretty out of it. since parade 50 is at a very sensitive point in it's development, i decided to skip painting today and put my attention on getting ahead of the game with my proofing of the actionlab curriculum.

i've been thinking more and more about reflections and how attracted i am to them. as i said yesterday, they might actually play a key role in the next round of abstract paintings i make, after my november show of parade paintings in houston.

i'm revisiting vermeer; arguably the greatest master who painted reflections. i think i'm correct in assuming that what excited him about painting reflections is similar to what it is that gets me turned on; namely that they provide material for painters like me who are in love with the beauty of "abstract" mark making but require a point of reference in the "real" world; a mirror; a window; a shiny floor; a body of water. a reflection takes the seeming solidity of an object and breaks it up...... you might say liquifies it. edges blur, forms meld and bend. but they still read as reflections, not simply abstract shapes.

when you look at yourself in a clean, clear good quality mirror you pretty much see what you would in a photograph. but if the mirror is cracked or dirty or of poor quality, or the lighting peculiar, you will probably see a more or less distorted image, but one that can still be read as "you."

2:01 pm: completed proofing on 2 chapters & taking a little break. on thursday our friends suzanne & kent arrived, as they do every thursday during the summer months from austin, colorado; about a 3 hour drive.. we were on our way to alamosa for the summer camp event, but nonetheless stopped & got fresh corn & half a box of colorado peaches. just about now is when the peaches are at their peak; sweet yet still firm, juicy & totally scrumptious! same with the corn; it's just the best. so mikela & i just now each had a peach. it's unusual for me to be here in the house at this time of day. by now she would have taken a break, but we're supporting each other in getting more done. time for another break.

assembling THE CHAIR

we bought a comfortable chair last month from ikea in denver, which has been sitting all this time it's huge box, which says ektorp jennylund; apparently the name given to this chair by those perverse swedes. . sounds like the title of a hieronymus bosch painting. so we were concerned, when we opened the box, something like this might come flying out! we managed to unbox it (where were you chris, harwood, brian & bob?) and get it into our guest room, officially known as the tv room, with it's big flat screen.

we had thought we were missing the legs, but lo, discovered them hidden under the seat cushion, neatly packaged as only ikea manages to do. so now we'll go down & i'll install the legs & put on the fabric cover we bought. and, after years of utter deprivation; sitting in a crappy folding chair to eat while watching tv, i will....i hope... be able to sit comfortably and watch sense8!

clues to upcoming abstract paintings / wildfire haze / summer camp showcase / parade 50 continues / today's strap / August 21, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

parade 50, 56x35", oil on portrait linen, as it looked at the end of my painting day today — *parade 50*, 56x35", oil on portrait linen, as it looked at the end of my painting day today

3:52 pm: here's where parade 50 is at. it's a little hard to read, since the red area at the bottom is only half done. but i should be able to make good progress tomorrow, at which point the space will probably make more sense.

1:35 pm: i'm at work on parade 50. at the same time waves of feeling ripple through my body, triggered by an email from a friend in greece. people and places long dormant in my consciousness. the physicality of the aegean; the voice of my old friend dimitris polemis, who died 10 years ago of brain cancer. the feel of the meltemi, the seasonal n.e. wind that brings, in the heat of august, relief and fragrances: thyme, oregano growing wild on the mountainsides. ripe figs.

i'll post pics of parade 50 soon. soon, my friends.

11:48 am: i recently joined space gallery in denver. the director, mike sent me an invitation to post in the monthly newsletter. this is an excerpt of my post, with the accompanying image. i kind of surprised myself, although i've known for a while that the images of reflections in a floor or pane of glass have been increasingly attracting me, and are a perfect source of imagery for the loose, painterly strokes i so love. i'm not the kind of painter who can just make these strokes without referring, even very loosely, to an actual image of something "real." i can't wait to see what emerges once i complete this parade series towards mid september. you can view the full painting either by scrolling down to my august 8 post, or by going to parade series, under the works menu item above. here's the excerpt:

I find that my realist and abstract work inform and enrich each other. This image is a detail of Parade 48, 68x56" and it may contain clues to the abstract paintings about to emerge.

7:48 am: this morning during our 6 am walk we saw a continuation of the haze from wildfires in the surrounding states. it's always a shock to see anything but crystal clear skies here in crestone.

last night's slv summer camp showcase at the steamshop makers space in alamosa was a huge success! see yesterday's post for more. it was well attended and there was lots of enthusiasm from parents, teachers and students when we revealed our plans for an expanded version next summer, plus possible weekly events during this school year.

today's strap choice is by toscana of italy: black calf with off-white stitching.

in a few hours i'll be back at work on parade 50, which should begin to pop by the end of my work day.

a most unusual day..... / August 20, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

8:57 pm: what a cool event! i'm too tired to go into detail, so i'll leave that for tomorrow. suffice it to say, the event, which was our summer camp showcase, was very well attended: about 50 people showed up. liquid nitrogen ice cream was made on the spot; the summer camp teachers shared about their experience & what they envision for next summer; parents were over the top excited about & grateful for the camp; it was just a very wonderful experience. the new principal of the middle school in alamosa showed up & was very impressed with what we had accomplished. here'a pic of one of the kids with the robots he built in the summer camp robot class.

12:22 pm: at this point in the day i would normally be painting. but today is not a normal day. this morning at 8:30 we had a google hangout with our two IT partners, ken & marc. we're only 2-3 weeks away from having our product, actionlab, "clickable" and ready to begin testing in the colorado schools we've targeted. so we're going over details, solving problems, etc.

once the hangout was complete, i came over to the studio to edit a 2 minute video of our pop-up dinner on august 4th so we can show it to those attending tonight's event in alamosa, where parents and students will evaluate our first ever SLV summer camp and offer their thoughts about how to improve it next summer. the pop-up restaurant class this summer was part of the camp curriculum.

in the mean time, now that i've completed my editing and created a quicktime movie, i'll scoot back to the house to get in as much time as i can making corrections to the actionlab curriculum before we leave for alamosa at 3.

we'll get back from alamosa late, so i'll report about tonight's gathering tomorrow morning, when i should be able to resume work on parade 50.

what will today bring? exciting additions to parade 50 are coming soon..../a different strap on my ball watch / August 19, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

4 pm: i don't know why i'm so totally exhausted this afternoon. i think tomorrow i'm going to try coming straight to my studio right after i make coffee & meditate, and not work on any corrections until after i get back in the afternoon. although i forgot, tomorrow afternoon we drive to alamosa for the summer camp reunion/evaluation. goodnight!!

so at any rate, while i didn't get as much done today as i would have liked, the work i did do is good, and has brought parade 50 along, so that it's about 25% there. it will change dramatically however once i start work on the lower portion of the canvas, which might be tomorrow....

2:48 pm: current state of parade 50

9:29 am:

in about an hour i'll resume work on parade 50, based on photos form above i shot at the denver museum of art recently. i'll post the updated pics as they become available. right now i'm working on corrections to an actionlab chapter titled field notes. here's what parade 50 looked like at the end of my painting day yesterday:

STRAP SWITCH

today i removed a custom strap i had made by stone creek from one of the watches in my collection, which had been sitting in a drawer, and installed it on my ball engineer diver watch. i think it was a good move. the deep grey ostich shin leather resonates with the blacks and greys in the watch face, and the patterning is subdued enough that it doesn't seem busy, or take away form the elegant design of the face; distinctively ball, with it's characteristic numerals, which are a reflection of the micro gas tubes they contain. on the left, the watch face at night, with it's glowing, colorful gas tubes, clearly visible with or without my glasses.

BELOW, 2nd row right: the original rubber strap that the watch came with. it too is a beautiful strap, but i get tired of the same thing and like to switch it up frequently. plus, the rubber strap is a sportier look, whereas the ostrich is dressier and thus more flexible; i just have to forego wearing it in the shower! the red stitching you may have noticed on one of the keepers in the photo bottom row center is left over from the original strap. i had ordered it with red stitching, but it was too much, so i sent it back & had her replace it with grey. she forgot that one bit of red, which i kind of like.

4 days in 1 / starting parade 50 / a new bag for my macbook air / August 18, 2015 by Philip Tarlow

4:04 pm: so here's where i stopped for the day. i'm more turned on by the image than i had thought. the best is yet to come; in the lower right quadrant is a red area with sculptures of dogs running about.....another sculpture exists roughly in the center of the image, which looks like a kind of infernal machine......wait till tomorrow!

1:53 pm: here's an early stage view of parade 50, 56x35" work will continue, probably for another hour & a half.

11:43: 1-our 6 am 2 mile walk, today in refreshing, mosquito-free 48F temps 2- making mikela's coffee, freshly roasted yesterday. today's cup: a unique blend of 3 ethiopians 3-an hour of corrections to one of 8 sections of chapter 6 of our curriculum, titled communicate, followed by my morning meditation. (the countdown has begun; in just 3 weeks we'll begin introducing actionlab, our startup educational product, to the teachers & students in 3 colorado schools, documenting their responses and visiting regularly to guide and answer questions that will arise.) 4- my 500 ft. commute to the studio, where i'm about to begin painting parade 50.

i got a new bag, designed in australia, for my new 13" macbook air. it's about as slender and spare as it could be, while still having sufficient pockets for my other stuff.

and now, lets get started on this new painting. pics, as usual, as they become available.