good morning mountains! / what will today bring? / pics of moffat school / a realization /  by Philip Tarlow

5 PM:¨ the realization i had after stopping work today was that i'm just not in a sit-down-for-hours-&-paint-flowers mode. i got very antsy and felt out of my groove. plus, i don't think either of those almond blossom painting are very good. so i'm not going to give either of them as a gift.

the space i'm in right now is a very active. i've evolved a way of working where i'm either standing or walking. i'm cutting, hammering, gluing, making big sweeping gestures with my fan brushes, scraping the surface...all very physical. i'm shifting directions in a flash, feeling that freedom of being able to go in any direction as long as it serves the integrity of the picture plane. so i'll return to that process tomorrow. see ya then!

2 PM: today's completed flowering apricots. BELOW LEFT: yesterday's version, RIGHT: today's

time to clean up & go up to the trail to take our walk. we've missed walking lately for various reasons, some weather related. you can definitely feel it in your body when you go too long without exercise. the next 3 days might be stormy, so lets get some walking in today! 

i'm anxious to get back into grey 18 tomorrow. i think it might change rather dramatically, and i do have some idea of a direction, but it might actually mean un-stretching & re-stretching it to do more collaging....

11 am: making the drawing for the final almond blossoms. next, i'll squeeze out the colors onto my palette & begin work. i'm catching the very last gasps of these blossoms, which are fast heading south. more pics in a bit. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7:53 AM: gearing up for my day in the studio, starting, i hope, with the final flowering almond blossom study. this morning's sky may be a sign, pointing to the winter storm watch we are currently under.

BELOW are some pics form our tour yesterday afternoon of the beautiful new moffat, colorado school. having been on the local committee meeting with the architects, who were receiving and implementing local opinions and feedback in the planning stage, we felt proud.  funds from a best grant from the state were matched by local funds from taxes to create this school, which is now a jewell in our valley. our county saguache (pronunced sa-wash) is the poorest in all of colorado.

unusual day.....flowering almond branch / goodnight mountains! /  by Philip Tarlow

7:26 PM: goodnight mountains!

 

 

11:36 AM: i decided, since today is a short work day, instead of trying to do anything further to grey 18, instead to make a color sketch for a gift i plan on giving to our wonderful friend, who gave us the flowering almond branch sunday night at dinner. i'll make the final, finished version tomorrow , when i have a full work day.

i had great fun; haven't painted flowers in a very long time! gotta do the final version tomorrow while they're still perky and fresh. when we look at this flowering almond branch, we get happy. which is why i said this may be the finest gift we ever received. if they were humans, they'd be adolescents right about now.

i kind of figured out what kind of prep i need to do to the paper for tomorrow, in order to get right to work. so i'll get that done right after my matcha tea.

BELOW: the colored pencil sketch preceded the version on the right, in acrylic on bristol paper.

BELOW: detail of grey 18, which will have to wait until tomorrow for further work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8:27 AM: short work day, if at all. we have a 1 PM meeting in moffat, about 1/2 hour away, so whatever i do on this painting will have to be quick! more later...here's a detail of how it looked at the end of my painting day yesterday:

pompeii / the distressed aesthetic / radical changes....again... /  by Philip Tarlow

3:30 PM: it's so dark out, with rumblings of thunder, i can't see a bloody thing, so i'm stoping for the day & mikela & i will sally forth the elephant cloud to get some romaine for dinner. grey 18, which i had thought was resolved, has taken a sharp turn & is becoming a portrait. we'll see what it does tomorrow. i must say, i created a fabulous surface to paint a portrait on! as soon as i'm done here & we come back frmo town, i'll check out the auction happening in athens at vergos where, he says, i'll find a painting of mine up for auction, as well as one by my former mother-in-law, niki karagatsi. i'll post it later.

 

 

 

11:15 AM: un-stretching grey 18 in preparation for the next in the series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i'm just fishing for today's topic. it's way too early to think, so i'll post a bit later....here's a detail from yesterday's grey 18, which kind of looks like a pompeiiian fresco; we'll see where it goes...there is something here of the distressed look, which you can see in this ABP strap i got recently. it's there in much of graffiti as well. you could say it's an aesthetic; the worn, the creased; the torn; the time-faded.....BELOW: a few more examples from grey 11 side by side with a time worn fresco from pompeii

the most beautiful gift / more work on grey 18... /  by Philip Tarlow

4:30 PM: couldn't leave it in that state, so one more scrumble & i'm outta here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3:50 PM: end of painting day; here's stage 4. work will continue tomorrow. for the moment at least, departing from the vermeer prototypes has perhaps resulted in a more painterly surface. but the painting has not yet found it's identity. is it a reflection in a large mirror? is it the events in the mirror jumping out, sticking their tongue out and wagging their tails? the map is not the territory.

 

 

 

 

 

1:35 PM: working on grey 18; here's stage 3

a samuri warrior photographed in 1867 & hand colored. i've got to paint this guy, just to get my hands on those robes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

At last night's dinner, we received what may be the most beautiful gift ever: a flowering apricot branch from the Zen Retreat Center garden. It's begging to be painted.....

i'm back at work on grey 18; more pics soon!

today's mystery / a panorama of our house /  by Philip Tarlow

3:30 PM: stage 2, stopping for the day. we have dinner guests at 6 & i want to go help prepare. this is a lightly sketched in version. as always, these early stages hold a certain seductive power for me and it's always tempting to stop & leave as is, fresh and airy. i have intense curiosity as to how this one will turn out, as it's only the third time in this series i've departed from vermeer prototypes. and it's the first time i'm not drawing from other great painters, as i did briefly with a terborch figure a few paintings back.

i've always been in love with the possibilities presented by mirrors, and this is no exception. stay tuned and we'll see what happens tomorrow.

2 PM: stage 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1:30 PM: stretching the canvas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:30 AM: assembling the 38x36" stretcher bars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 AM: the next painting in the grey series, i've decided, will be (at least in the early stages) based upon photos i shot in a mirror at our friend kat's house last week in edwards, colorado. it will be a 36x38" canvas, which i'm, about to stretch over board, to facilitate collaging. here's one of the shots i'll be working from:

a panorama showing some of the 11 grey series paintings hanging in our house

8:35 AM: today's direction in my studio is still a mystery, now that grey 17 is complete. i'll update as the day progresses.

back at my easel / the opening at space gallery /  by Philip Tarlow

3PM: the sky is getting very dark, & rain is imminent. i'm stopping here for today. the painting has gained in warmth. while i did emphasize select areas of off-whites to make it pop a bit more, it's not as defined as it was a few stages back and still maintains it's overall integrity, without having your eye get stuck on any of the details.

as long as it doesn't start raining, i may bring it back over to the house, where it can be viewed alongside the others in the series. the upper floor of our house, where our east & west living rooms are, has become a gallery for the grey series, so it's possible to asses them as discreet paintings as well as together as a series.

this one is approaching my ideal, of a painting that's viscerally exciting, like a great desert or sex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1:07PM: i'm back at my easel, working into grey 17. it was a bit too greyed out, so i'm tweaking some of the lighter areas so they pop more. i'm always alert to the dangers of getting too caught up in the descriptive, so at any point these grey series paintings are subject to a sudden and sometimes vigorous scrumbling. i'm even considering taking a step backwards in my process and including more collaged elements.

 

the space gallery opening:

2 nights ago, reMARKable opened at space gallery in denver. i gave a talk at 5:30, and invited three of my fellow artists participating in the show to jump in and talk about their work.

below are some pics from the opening. if you've never visited space gallery, it's quite beautiful. the space, as you can see, is very large and on two levels. the architecture is contemporary, elegant and uniquely well suited for works of art. the atmosphere at the opening was intimate, warm, relaxed.....a refreshing experience. 

.Mikela is holding the burnett's adopted daughter, recently arrived from India. When it came my turn to stroll about with her, she wanted to touch every single painting. She is delightful. the kid i'm talking with in the last pic is asher, one of whose beautiful drawings i have here in my studio.

middle school / contemplating my talk on thursday /  by Philip Tarlow

today we're working with 3 classes of middle school kids, supporting them in preparing their project presentation dress rehearsal in 2 weeks, and their final presentations the 3rd week in may. the idea is for their project presentations to be fun, interactive, informative, and NOT involve the deadly tri-folds. once again, we're seeing that middle school kids, once freed from the constraints of one-size fits-all education, quickly find their natural enthusiasm for learning.

 

12:30 PM: we're on luch break, and i'm thinking about my gallery talk in a few days at space gallery in denver. it will be an interesting experience to meet the other artists i'm showing with in the reMARKable show, only one of whom i know and am friends with on facebook. my plan is to talk mostly about my love for process, and how that looks in the creation of the works i'm exhibiting. it will be too bright to use the projector successfully, so i've brought some props with me, for example: illustrations of "unfinished" 19th c. plein air paintings, where the unfinished bits are an integral part of the painting, somehow making it ok for me to treat every phase of a new painting as the final phase; a few sheets of old oil palettes iuse for my collages; some of my warm-up exercises, which are studies of an 11th c. chinese calligrapher's work, some of which are later incorporated into collages, etc. my message being that the process is the product, and that knowing that makes the creation of art a far more inclusive and satisfying event.

good morning edwards / looking back /  by Philip Tarlow

siting here in the school lunch/faculty meeting area, i was browsing my photos in adobe bridge and ran across this painting, titled grey 4 and dated 11/2015. it has since become one of my grey/vermeer series.

7:30 am: view of edwards

 

 

 

 

a share from a middle school student today: even in hard times, you can always get a good laugh.....sometimes

scrumbling grey "grey 9" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:55 PM: i updated my favorites page just now, adding the url for my son dimitri's poreia theatre, and an image form his site. click on the drop down menu: favorites

 

1:53 PM: i had time this morning before leaving for edwards to do a scrumble on grey 9. i feel much better about it now, and once we get back i can go back into it.

there was no mystery in the previous version. once again, it was a woman playing a lute and showing a note or letter to her maid. it needs to be about painting...marks on a surface; space; color....

grey 9 transformation /  by Philip Tarlow

3:40 PM: stage 3:

stopping here for the day, actually, for the week, since we drive up to edwards tomorrow to do some more work with the teachers & kids at 2 middle schools. now that the kids have the beta, we're getting very valuable feedback, which is overwhelmingly positive. so it's exciting, because suddenly it hit us we have a great and much needed product! the kids love that they can take ownership of their learning, and choose how they learn, which can be tailored to their learning style. it's very cool! and it all started with national geographic....it's a long story. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1:30 PM: stage 2:

12:20 PM: the weather has finally turned, bringing warmer, seasonal temps and clear skies. i see us walking this afternoon. 

after living with grey 9 for over a month, i decided to completely re-work it. all that was left of the poor lacemaker was a half hidden hand in an otherwise abstract painting. not a bad painting, but not really where i'm at with this series, which morphs well known vermeer paintings into present time semi-abstract free wheeling, gestural events. this one, 48x24" is based upon the love letter, which my mentor and friend tsarouchis was obsessed with. now i understand why! i've already done one version, which you'll find on the grey page on the drop down menu.

so this morning i dove right in, as is my wont and began transforming, all the while having tremendous fun. the brushes i'm using, all of them fan brushes at this point, are a bit like wielding a sabre and moving up, down and across the canvas like an ice skater on ADT (from the tv show, the name of which escapes me at the moment.) it's a pill that ups your game 1000% and gives you super powers. so back to my work, until i crap out, usually around 2-3 pm. 

charles, if you are reading this, that's a good time to call by the way.