June 26, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

8:04 PM: the 5 gaze series paintings are stacked in our entryway, ready to be loaded in the car tomorrow morning, driven to salida, packed & shipped to houston. i'm proud of them, and i wish them a safe and easy journey. and that they find their homes and give their new owners ongoing delight and pleasure.

4 PM: if you haven't had a chance to watch the youtube interview i posted yesterday, with lucien freud, i highly recommend it. when asked questions by the interviewer, he is disarmingly forthright and honest about his process as a painter. at the time, he was called the worlds greatest living portrait painter, but you wouldn't know it from his tone. i especially love how he responds when asked how he handles it when things are going well & he's on a roll. i relate a lot to how he answers. freud was not a fan of formal interviews and did not like to be photographed. as a result, this rare footage offers us a very private, one feels, look into the life and world of one of our greatest 20th c. painters..

*gaze 26*, 32x32" as it looked when i stopped painting for the day

2:06 PM: there's a tree about 20 minutes up the trail that was struck by lightening, split at the base and has fallen in a way that diagonally blocks the trail, so that you have to duck to get past it. this morning because of the mosquito netting jacket and due to the fact that it was still not fully light at 5:15 am, i walked smack into it. i hit my forehead hard and was thrown back, so that i landed flat on my back. i had gotten a concussion only a few months ago, when a painting fell on my head in the studio. i sure hope i didn't get another one. but i don't feel great and therefore am stopping for the day.

gaze 26 has once again transformed, but normally i would have taken it further than what you see here. i just can't work any more, so i'll have to resume on tuesday. tomorrow we're going to salida to ship the 5 paintings and some ceramics to houston.

8:04 AM: running a little late this morning as we did our trail walk at 5 am. i intend to continue work on gaze 26 (below right) and possibly make some changes to gaze 21 (below left).

good morning crestone...early start / productive day? / June 25, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

2:36 PM: gaze 26 is now inspired by a 1st c. fayum painting. i painted most of this today while listening to a youtube video with a rare lucien freud interview in which he addresses some of the same issues i face, as do most artists. such as, how do you deal with it when you're on a roll? he mentions various things he tries to do so that his streak continues, concerning for example sleep and food, all of course to no avail. he is very vulnerable in this interview. i may stop for the day even though it's early. i'm tired and it's probably best to wait till the morning.

i've embedded the video clip below, and the bit i'm referring to occurs at 2 min. 34 sec. of the clip.

1:32 PM: when you are painting humans, you've got the best subjects in the world lucien freud

i met him briefly in london in the '70's.

10:02 AM: i've done some work on gaze 26 this morning. this is what it looks like right now. so, is this an abstract painting because there is no immediately recognizable representational image or passage? what is your opinion? if you knew the previous state, which you can view if you scroll down to my june 23 post, you will readily detect what remains of the face, neck and sleeve of the woman in this vermeer inspired painting. otherwise, you might eventually see it, but it will have already become part of your experience of the overall abstract composition! so which is it? or is it neither? i may take it further soon; stay tuned.

this rock, bathed in morning light, sits next to my roaster on our kitchen counter

6:48 AM: we ended up not doing our trail walk this morning, which means i'll get an earlier start than i had thought. and we don't need to be at the crestone brewpub opening till 5 or 6 pm, so i have a full day in front of me.

ron, harwood & trish at gremillion in houston have selected the 5 paintings in my gaze series below to be sent to the gallery. we'll prepare them for shipping asap & they should be in houston by the end of the week.

breaking out / June 24, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

2:30 PM: here's where i'm stopping for the day; i have to be somewhere at 3:30. this totally unexpected painting, which i'm calling gaze 27, is based on a photograph i took with my phone last year at a dinner party. tamar is an excellent chef, and she was cooking when i shot this from above. she has this amazing red hair, and the way it was falling over her ears is a painter's dream. in it's current state, this painting evokes giacometti portraits with a dose of manet & a sprinkling of freud. of course, it's all tarlow, but tarlow is all these things.

i have no idea where it will go tomorrow, which is a short day due to the noon opening celebration of the crestone brewery. plus, we plan on walking up the trail tomorrow morning, so i may not get much done.

i just now learned that gremillion & co. fine art is requesting that i send 5 of the gaze series paintings, which we've become used to living with in our house. better they should be in the gallery, and maybe i'll recieve my first round of feedback soon, and some or all will find homes in houston. i've posted pics of the 5 at the bottom of this page.

11:41 AM: you always need to break out....of something. we get stuck. in ideas, actions, various repetitive, mindless behaviors. this morning i took an unsuccessful gaze series painting and painted over it. it's not like the others in the series, and is based upon a photo i took of our friend tamar cooking dinner at a friend's house in crestone. here's how it looks right now:

gaze 26 re-invents itself / June 23, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

2:45 PM: it's been a strange day. it all started at 4 AM when we got up to prepare for our trail walk. it was still dark out, but felt somewhat cooler than other mornings. the average nightime temperature for this date is 45F, and it's been 50-57F. that makes a huge difference when you are hiking up a steep trail briskly. it feels hot. combined with the clouds of mosquitoes, it ain't too much fun. but we're committed to 3x a week minimum, and you can feel just how beneficial it is for your body.

once i got to the studio though, i felt strange. and it took me a couple of hours to get to work. now, as you might imagine, mikela and i are very much in sync. we always know whether the other is having a productive day. so i was perplexed when i couldn't get to work, and actually felt bored; something i never feel in my studio. we just talked on the phone, and she revealed that she's been working on what may be the only piece of the curriculum she finds boring.

i had intended yesterday to make a radical change to gaze 26. the image shifted from one based upon a 1st c. male fayum portrait to one based upon a vermeer. from a man to a woman. from a full frontal pose to a head cropped just above the nose, with the focus on her enormous sleeve.

i knocked myself out, so lets see how this painting looks in the morning. i'm going to clean my brushes, go back to the house & lie down with mikela.

unexpected revision of gaze 21 / returning to "gaze 26" / June 22, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

2:56 PM: as thunder rumbles in the distance, i'm stopping here for the day, gaze 26 is far from resolved, so tomorrow after our walk i'll resume work on it.

1:28 PM: i've been able to go back into gaze 26 and, as i said in last night's post, it is deconstructing, but continues to look like a variation on a fayum portrait. i added some writing across the image, which exists in the original. my variation says "irene, daughter of philip; may her soul ressurect forever....".

color is of special interest to me in this painting. at the moment, pale pinks, blues, ochres and greens dominate.

10:59 AM: gaze 21 has been hanging in our bedroom for the past few weeks, and this morning i decided it needed more work, in part as a result of our most excellent dialogue yesterday with ron & harwood in houston.

so i did a scrumble and worked into it....you will notice a few new elements, such as the rather pronounced eye which has appeared about mid-canvas, 3/4 of the way up, more emphasis on the necklace in the lower central quadrant and replacement of the mouth on the left by a graphite drawing. overall, the jumpiness of the transitions has smoothed out, and i've somewhat relaxed my attachment to the emphasis on the vertical bands of collaged off-white paper that created this departure from the rest of the series in the first place. curious to know if you agree that it's an improvement; your eye, on my opinion has more opportunity to rove across the picture plane, settling on key passages and resting there, hassle-free. click on one of the images to make it full screen, then toggle between the two to see what i mean.

i'll gaze at it as i renew work on the new gaze 26. here are before (left) & after (right) pics as it stands right now:

gaze 26 evolves to next stage / June 21, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

9:23 PM: tomorrow morning she will deconstruct.

2 PM: here's the current state of gaze 26 as i wrap it up early to make it to my doctors appointment. it's a good place to stop, because what i've done is so present and powerful as an image, i don't quite know what to do.

12:40 PM: i had a really productive and wonderful dialogue with ron & harwood at gremillion this morning. we reviewed the gaze series, a few of which will be shipped to the gallery soon. i received invaluable feedback of the calibre every fine artist dreams. so i'm getting back to work a little late, especially since i need to leave at 3 for a dr.appointment in moffat, 17 miles west of crestone,

so here's what i've done thus far, and i'll be continuing to paint for about another 2 hours before cleaning up & leaving.

a few more tweaks & on to "gaze 26" / June 20, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

3:41 PM: end of my painting day; here's stage 2 of the drawing and stage 1 of the gaze 26. i'm going to stop for the day & allow this striking image to familiarize herself with my studio and get a sense of herself in this new reality.

3:03 PM: gaze 26 drawing has been sprayed with fixative and is drying in the sun.

2:38 PM: initial drawing for gaze 26

12:30 PM: this may be the resolved and final version of gaze 25. the tweaks accomplished my goal of unifying the picture plane, adjusting any jarring dissonances in her visage while mainting the haunting mystery of her gaze. she has, i think, left her 1st century environment and traveled to the 21st century carrying the same rich assortment of thoughts, feelings, memories she had when she was pinned down in time.

the greens set her apart from her siblings in the series, and the scrawls above her left forhead inform us that she is, above all else, a painting.

8:01 AM: another scorcher here in crestone, with possible record breaking heat & haze in the valley from wildfires in new mexico.

i was a tad off my game when i did yesterday's tweaks, so i'm going back in this morning before it gets too hot. i'm going to have to rev up my huge swamp cooler in the studio, which is way too noisy but definitely cools the studio down. just make sure you've got all loose papers secured!

here are 6 stages in the process of gaze 25 thus far, top left first:

gaze 25 tweaks today / June 19, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

1:12 PM: my first hit when i entered the studio was that the skins tones on the left (our left) side of her face needed to be warmer. my second was that there was something slightly disturbing about her nose. and finally, the shadow beneath her lower lip seemed to dark and too big. it's improved, but the true test is always taking it over to the house to determine how it holds up in the company of it's brothers and sisters. it definitely has a very strong presence; a strong gaze.

today i renamed the entire series the gaze, and dropped the grey series title. that has interested me for many years and dates back at least to 1971, when i made my first studies of fayum paintings hanging in the british museum and the louvre. i had the opportunity to paint those studies on site, standing directly in front of the ancient portraits. i would do a much better job today; nonetheless it was an invaluable experience, who i owe to a large degree to my mentor & friend, yannis tsarouchis. tsarouchis was a passionate student of the fayum. the study you see on the left was purchased in 1979 by joseph h. hirshhorn, founder of the hirshhorn museum & sculpture gaden, in washington, d.c.

looking back / grey 25 playground / June 18, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

3:43 PM: one more round & that's it for today. she's got an identity now .

2:46 PM: collaging painting & scrumbling have taken place. she is more aware of exactly who she is becoming, but still becoming. archile gorky has entered my awareness just now. the great armenian/american painter had a profound influence on deKooning and single handedly defined biomorphic abstraction for an entire generation of painters.

BELOW: gorky's portrait of master bill and diary of a seducer

10:50 AM: evaluating grey 25 and determining whether to let it be for now or jump back in

in my studio on january 2, 2016 with grey 6

7:08 AM: this morning i'll be playing with grey 25. playing in the sense of a cellist practicing as much as a kid in the playground.

pics will be posted throughout the process.

jumping back into grey 25 / June 17, 2016 by Philip Tarlow

3 PM: post-scrumble

2:38 PM: while talking with harwood & mikela on the phone, i made some progress on grey 25. here's the current state. undoubtedly a scrumble is about to happen.

12:40 PM: this is about the latest i've ever gotten working, but i had a very productive & wonderful call with the guys at gremillion & co. fine art: ron, john, bob & harwood. we went through about half the paintings in the grey series, with many valuable observations and comments. so i'm still buzzing from that, plus a tad whacked out from having been up since 4 & going on our trail trek. getting to work, pics when available. RIGHT: detail of grey 25 as it looked yesterday.