getting to work early /  by Philip Tarlow

2 PM: stopping here for the day. this painting is just itching for a scrumble.  i say, let it rest for 24 hours, enjoy the silence of the night alone in the studio, and lets see where it takes me tomorrow.

from a january blog post:

*scrumbling: a word i made up to describe scraping/rubbing/dragging the palette knife over the surface, then painting back into it. the eye, rather than getting stuck on the details, such as her lips or hat, moves smoothly across the picture plane. there is more choice, more freedom on the part of the viewer to alight here or there. the mind/eye fills in suggested details as it fabricates it's own meanings. one has the capacity to dream more easily, while at the same time being able to notice and appreciate the painterly passages as painterliness.

 

grey 11, 38x38"  at 1 pm

 

 

 

 

 

1 PM: current state of grey 11. it's too literal, but all the paintings in the grey series go through this phase. i have to keep reminding myself: you can't sacrifice the integrity of the picture plane for a pretty face.

grey 11 at 11 am, wrapped in a swirling cloud

 

 

 

 

 

10:40 AM: listening to: maria callas with gino penno singing an aria from il trovatore. surely one of the peaks in musical history.

10:04 AM: i'm getting back to work relatively early on grey 11, to allow for a full afternoon, when i have a meeting to attend.

preparing grey 10 companion piece /  by Philip Tarlow

6:30 PM: once i cleaned my brushed, i started my share of the calls we're making to support berni for president. it feels good to be ding my little part in getting him elected. GO BERNIE!!

so work on grey 11 will resume in the morning. what will happen is a mystery. thank god for the mystery!

3:45 PM: stopping here for the day. this will mostly be gone by tomorrow afternoon. so think of it as an underpainting; a sketch; a way of familiarizing myself with the image and a base not for improvisation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2:20 PM: the canvas has been stretched and the preliminary drawing is done. this drawing, based on vermeer's girl with a pearl earring will be collaged and painted over, creating layers. i've isolated the head, which will fill the 38x38" canvas. vermeer's original painting, (detail below right), is 17.5x15."

DETAIL of the completed  grey 10    38x38"  

10:50 AM: i'm about to unstretch and restretch grey 10, from a stretcher bar with a masonite backing to one with no backing. the masonite provides a hard surface under the canvas, allowing me to collage onto it, which involves pressing hard into the canvas, without having it give way, thus creating a more secure bond between the paper i'm collaging and the surface of the canvas.

once that maneuver is complete, i can begin grey 11, which i intend to be a companion piece for grey 10, ideally both will be purchased by the same collector & hung, for example, facing each other on opposite walls, or side by side.

looking back / preparing for a new 38x38" painting /  by Philip Tarlow

8:33 PM: today i mainly focused on taking care of non-painting stuff that had been piling up. financila stuff, Actionlab communications, and so on.

once i had that handled, i began prep for a new 38x38" painting/collage, which may be a companion piece to the just completed grey 10. i should be able to start tomorrow morning, after some un-stretching & stretching of canvases that needs to happen first.

rom late 2014here's a small (16x16") painting collage from late 2014 that represents a bridge between my previous ano kato series and my current grey series. there is a companion piece, but these are the only two paintings constituting that bridge.

click on the grey and ano kato dropdown menus to view these two series.

continued work on grey 10 / looking back: 1978 /  by Philip Tarlow

12:30 PM: as promised, i scrobbled, scraped and re-worked the entire surface of grey 10, 38x38." true to the series title, it has indeed greyed out, and in the process gained some of the mystery characteristic of the entire series. the fact that much of the work on this painting was done with the canvas lying flat on a table accounts for some of the distortion in the face, when compared with the original. vermeer's face is long and narrow; this one is wide and rounded. 

10:45 AM: about to get back to work on grey 10.

four 12x6" paintings of a greek fisherman on the island of andros telling the story of how about 100 people, including his family, were saved from a fire in a movie theatre in asia minor by the intervention of the divine mother. painted in 1978 in oil on linen, this painting is in our collection.

i made a number of variations on these paintings, one of which is in the estate of henry geldzahler, former curator of 20th c. art at the met in nyc. they are all based on b&w photos i had the presence of mind, to shoot as nikos the fisherman told the story in a very animated way. it was the very first movie theatre in smyrna, built of wood. a few minutes into the show, the projector broke. the theatre owner asked everyone to leave, as it was going to take time to repair. minutes after the last person exited the theatre, it burst into flames and burnt to the ground. the greek theatre attendees considered this a miracle; an intervention by despina, or the virgin. thus, the painting's title, the miracle.

wiping out attachments to content /  by Philip Tarlow

9:06 PM: a scrobble will take place tomorrow morning. the image will vibrate; accentuate; nastyfate; drizzle & scrape. and that's just for starters. no telling what might happen in that studio. implosions; skate boarding; visions; fan brush fantasies.

grey 10  38x38"  mixed media on canvas, as it looked today at 2:30 pm

2:25 PM: i painted over the previous image, based on vermeer's the love letter, and returned to the girl with the red hat.

it has a number of gorgeous, painterly passages i can riff on. i use the word riff advisedly, since my experience of working on this series is a lot like what i imagine playing jazz is like. or any musical mode that involves improvisation. discovering a phrase or passage that moves you and riffing on it. thus far, almost all the work i've done today was with the canvas lying on my table, allowing for wide sweeping strokes without the wet paint dripping down the canvas.

i like to think i felt vermeer's joy at executing this amazing little painting.

 

 

1:42 AM: grey 10 was becoming far too image centric. by that i mean i was sweating the details whist ignoring my playground: the picture plane; a decades old tendency.  so i lay the canvas down on my large table and began painting over, scraping, drawing. here's where it's at, as i take my oatmeal break.

grey 10/ the love letter continues /  by Philip Tarlow

3:34 PM: a cloudy, windy day. did more work than expected despite the late start.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BELOW: details at 3pm


12:29 PM: late start today. a lazy day. here's a detail of grey10/the love letter before getting started.

"grey 10" sanded & ready for more changes /  by Philip Tarlow

grey 10 at 3 pm: i had to soften it a bit before stopping for the day. it was too harsh. if you've read my previous posts, you will understand why this particular vermeer painting holds special meaning for me, having to do with a variation tsarouchis painted in his studio outside paris during the period when i was living in greece & spending time in his studio.

 

 

 

BELOW: grey 10 at 2pm. i'll stop for the day soon to take our stupa walk & continue tomorrow. it will likely soften and become less busy tomorrow.

1 PM: progress made in the past hour:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

noon: the painting has been flipped upside down and the new image is starting to appear, based upon vermeeer's love letter. it has a textural richness and mystery that would not have been possible without the collage overlayed with the fayoum portrait inspired painting.

this is a painting in oil on linen, done in 1967 at a hat shop in piraeus, where my former mother-in-law niki karagatsi and i used to go together. it's from the estate of my mother, liz gitten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

10am: the entire surface of the painting/collage titled grey 10 has been sanded and is ready for another layer of painting/collage. i was not happy with the results of yesterday's work at all.

grey 10 transforms /  by Philip Tarlow

5:27 PM: i feel like i went down a rabbit hole today with this one. what you see here will be gone tomorrow. 

1:59 PM: and here's the latest state, with 3 details below. it's easy to see how the fayoum portraits are the link to early byzantine icons found in the sinai, as doxiadi suggests in her book. both are in encaustic on wood panels and both reflect the earlier classical greek portraits which we only know from descriptions. had these portraits, painted in about 150-250 AD, not become part of the ancient egyptian mumification and burial rituals, they too would have been lost. they are perhaps the earliest examples we have of the painterly in art history. 

additionally, these fayoum portraits, many of them, have an intensity of gaze and specificity of personality not often attained by later artists. 

as doxiadi points out in her brilliant book, this one in particular contains many passages with  gestural strokes we see centuries later in the dutch masters like hals.

ilikely would not have felt such an affinity were it not for yannis tsarouchis, who studied and was influenced deeply by the fayoum, as was his buddy lila di nobilis, who i was fortunate to meet in paris. they inspired me to make copies of fayoum portraits in the louvre and the british museum.

scroll down this post to view the painting in 3 stage of development; the most recent being the one on the top.

 

"grey 10" progress /  by Philip Tarlow

7:30 PM: i made the decision tonight to continue working on grey 10 and continue the series inspired by vermeer. what you see here will become the underpainting for the next in the series. i'll decide on which vermeer to riff on tomorrow morning. 

3:27 PM: so i left it alone and did no more work. i have no idea what i'll do tomorrow morning, but it's possible i might not do anything more on this one. 

i'd like to have about 5-6 canvases ready to go, so i can continue to work uninterrupted during this uninterrupted 2 week stretch at home. that involves some prep work. when i do these collaged paintings, i need to stretch the canvas over a hard surface, like a thin piece of masonite, which i can't get here in crestone. i'm going to try to figure that out in the next few days. 

12:54 pm: stage 3. the image has flipped 180 degrees. at some point soon, it may become far simpler. for now, i'm enjoying the juxtaposition of images and being reminded of a large torn billboard we saw three or four years ago, opposite the platform we were standing on in the paris metro. the underlying pink hold it all together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:54 am: work continues on grey 10, with numerous new collaged elements, including articles on francis bacon and roy lichtenstein, as well as a vintage new haven map courtesy of my dear friend dan, lower left, and a map of the island of andros, sent to me by my son dimitri, lower right.

 

grey 10/lacemaker III process /  by Philip Tarlow

grey 10/lacemaker III  38x38"  at the end of my work day

 

 

 

 

 

2:41 pm: stopping for the day; going for a walk up to the stupa! hoping there's not too much snow & ice on the trail, a steep uphill about a mile to the top. BELOW: details of the lower left & upper right quadrants.

1:19 pm: about to take a lunch break; here's where the painting is at. and on the right, a cutout piece of paper slathered with mat medium & ready to be placed on the painting and smoother out & flattened, so that there are no air bubbles. hate the air bubbles! the stretched canvas is resting on a piece of masonite, making it easier to press hard with a spatula and make sure the paper is completely flat.