"gaze 17" & ron's genius /  by Philip Tarlow

                             BEFORE                                                                                       AFTER

3:16 PM: a few weeks ago we went through the gaze series with ron gremillion, owner of gremillion & co. fine art, where i am represented in houston, and a friend of over 20 years. my dear friend & gremillion sales person harwood was also present. it was a phone conversation, and we were all looking at the work on our screens, going through the paintings one by one. 

when we got to gaze 17, he thought for a few minutes and then pointed out that the curtain on the upper right was interfering & needed to be pushed back. i could see his point, but did nothing about it until today. it has been hanging in our house & every time i looked at it all i could see was that damn curtain!

today was the day. i carried it over to the studio, pushed back the curtain and, to my amazement, everything in the painting suddenly popped. ron's observations are always right on the money, even though sometimes you don't want to admit it. when it comes to evaluating paintings critically, he's simply a genius. i've posted the before & after pics above.

revisiting "gaze 23" today /  by Philip Tarlow

1:53 PM: ending my painting day a bit early; i have an appointment this afternoon. i made a few more improvements to gaze 23, which make it pop a bit more and, i believe, adds these all important qualities: juiciness/desert-good enough to eat; complex and painterly enough to provide many hours of gazing pleasure and mysterious enough to inspire a rich conversation.

7:41 AM: now that gaze 21 has been successfully re-worked, it's the turn of gaze 23. this one has been hanging in our bedroom of late, so we've had a chance to look at it in half-light as well as daylight. in half-light, it looks like a very interesting abstract painting. in daylight, the eye jumps about, much as it did with gaze 21 before yesterday's intervention. does that mean a similar process will take place with gaze 23? don't honestly know. in a fe whours i'll post pics of an early stage of the revision.

all important final tweak to "gaze 27" / "gaze 21" revisited /  by Philip Tarlow

2:27 PM: returning to gaze 21: i wasn't happy with gaze 21. it's been hanging in the house, then i brought it to the studio & did a scrumble, then turned it to the wall to give it a rest. now that gaze 27 is resolved, i went back into it just now. below: left, june 1st/ middle, june 22 and on the right, gaze 21 at 2 pm today.   it seems more resolved; the eye doesn't bounce around as it did in the earlier stages, and it's more unified as a result of the warm wash of color i applied an hour ago.it has a coherence when you look at it in person. a mystery characteristic of the entire series. we'll see how it strikes me when i enter the studio tomorrow. that will be later than usual, since were taking our trail walk at 5 am.

i think i'll stop for the day and do some work on the presentation i'm putting together for the german gallery i have a very good introduction to. i'd like to complete it & get it off to ron to review in the next week.

12:10 PM: after evaluating gaze 27 in the house last night & this morning, it became clear it needed one tweak. it was in the collaged area on the lower right of the face, where a piece of collaged greek newspaper was popping out and causing the eye to settle. 

that adjustment made, the painting has been signed and dated and is currently sitting on my easel until i re-stretch it onto a stretcher bar without the masonite panel, which facilitates collaging but is unnecessary once the piece is complete. 

not sure what's next....stay tuned & i'll post as soon as i know. in the mean time, here are some details of gaze 27, revealing brushwork, collaged maps & newspapers, textures, etc.

sexiness trumps all / breakin' up is hard to do.... /  by Philip Tarlow

1:23 PM: sexiness trumps all: introducing a few collaged elements juiced up the picture surface. examples: the blue and pink of the map on the upper right; the colored dots, especially the green ones in the lower quadrant....(see detail below) ...these elements add incalculably to that quality translating to increased liveliness, playfulness, pure visual desert-like qualities that make looking at the painting an ongoing adventure.

in an ideal world, this is what would determine the value of a painting, and not the price it fetched at auction. 

if you peruse the sequence of my gaze series by scrolling down on my home page, you may observe a progression in the work. i use the word progression advisedly, since i believe it's a mistake to apply the concept of progress to art. i feel that process is a better word. so in the process of creating this body of work, i've learned a few new things about painting, and that new knowledge and technique has naturally become part of the more recent work in the series. one hopes that the sum total of all one has learned and experienced continues to enrich one's work until the very end. matisse, with his end-of-life paper cut outs is a fine example, i believe. the formulaic solution, whether in art, politics or whatever, is death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12:28 PM: "breakin' up is hard to do..." the first stage of the breakup of gaze 27; it was inevitable...in retrospect!

 

 

 

 

10:26 AM: in looking at gaze 27, i'm feeling it needs more complexity. as usual, i've become too attached to the representational qualities of the face. so when i get to the studio, my first move will be to begin breaking it up.

gaze 27 tweaked /  by Philip Tarlow

3:22 PM: we left the house at 4:55 am to walk the trail, then had a meeting with gail schwartz, who is running for office in colorado & stopped for an hour in crestone. so i was up at 4:30 & didn't get to the studio till 1:30. although i did do some good tweaks to gaze 27, i need to get in a good day tomorrow. if i get to the studio early, i may be able to resolve gaze 27 by the end of the day. i'm posting yesterday's version next to today's (right above) see what you think. it certainly pops more, and his expression has shifted, i think in a good direction.

his curls have livened up, and the whole painting has a warmer tone. i can see a few things i need to do tomorrow, one being his upper lip. in general, i'm loving gazing at this gaze series painting. right now i'm going to clean my brushes. when we get back from grocery shopping in town, i'll post some pics form this morning's walk and a few having to do with a fire alert in the mountains.

gaze 27 continues /  by Philip Tarlow

5:56 PM: it's close, but i'm going to do a bit more to the left eye, or his right eye, and possibly something in the area just to our right of his face.

1:49 PM: in one more layer, painted this morning, gaze 27 has shifted imagery to a detail of a male fayum portrait.. the original is in a munich museum, and was painted in 117-138 AD. his gaze in the original has less of a wistful look. vertically, the head fills the entire 32" of the canvas. traces of previous layers can be discerned, such as the green map on the right. i'm certain the fayum portrait painters were crazy about the curly locks of many of their subjects, as am i. curly locks are a delight for painterly painters, allowing the characteristic gestural flourishes to vivaciously enliven the surface.

as has been noted by some art history writers, all paintings; especially portraits, are self portraits.   

9:02 AM: following yesterday's high winds, we have a tranquil, cloudless morning. gaze 27 was brought to the house yesterday afternoon and will be on it's way back to the studio this morning. while it contains some beautiful passages, such as the one in this detail, it's not there yet and so will be worked on again today. 

i've been thinking about the presentation i want to put together for the gallery i have an intro to in germany, and feel ready to begin work on that. maybe today? it needs to be simple, and tell the story of my gaze series mostly through images.

good morning crestone / gaze 27 in uncharted waters? /  by Philip Tarlow

12:53 PM: i knew when i woke up this morning that gaze 27 was in for a big shift. the painting traversed a rocky, exciting road this morning, landing in the state you see here. on first glance, it reminds one of faded byzantine frescos or perhaps japanese prototypes. what i did was in part influenced by the stunning images of byzantine frescos in mani, in the southern peloponese dimitri emailed this morning. 

the excitement lay in following the energy, wherever it led me. my mind would try to jump in, i thanked it for sharing and kept going. slathering, scraping, pasting, cutting, scribbling. it's one of the few times i'm completely unaware of the tinnitus-caused ringing in my left ear.

haven't eating anything, so i'll take a little break & evaluate as i cook/eat, casting furtive glances at gaze 27, hanging on my studio wall.

6:52 am: ok, so here are a couple of shots i took early this morning & posted on FB. i have gradually been developing this aesthetic in my photography of reflections reflecting reflections of gorgeous skies in the baca at sunrise & sunset. it's gradually been dawning on me that this IS my aesthetic, and that my layering in these gaze paintings is moving in a similar direction. suddenly i had a huge urge to re-discover gaze 27 based upon all this. how? we'll see in a few hours!

after trail walk, late start; gaze 27 continues /  by Philip Tarlow

3:12 PM: i did quite a bit of work on gaze 27 today, despite the fact that i got a late start. the original i'm busing for inspiration, lady writing a letter, was painted in 1665 and was given to the national galley of art in washington, d.c. by harry waldron hevemeyer. dorothy havemeyer, who was related to harry, was a client of my dad, who was a c.p.a. in nyc. in the tradition of dutch art of that period, a woman writing a letter almost always relates to love. the woman pauses in her letter writing to look, or gaze at the viewer with an enigmatic expression. 

in my 21st c.version, the painterly qualities of vermeer have been emphasized, but of course on a far larger scale. as always, my primary concern is the integrity and juicyness of the picture surface. layers of abandoned portraits beneath this one whisper their invisible existence, making what we see on the surface reverberate with presences that, although buried, are not forgotten, such as the portrait of the kickapoo chief's daughter, one layer down.

i'm tuckered out, so i'll stop for the day & continue in the morning. it's been a hot day, and i have my large, noisy but effective swamp cooler going full blast.

10:55AM: getting a late start after our trail walk this morning. i still haven't done my hour of editing, so i'll get to the studio noon-ish & make up for lost time by ramping up my energy, already ramped up by our 2+ hours on the trail. Lots of mosquitoes today; couldn't have done it without or bug jackets & hoods.

back into gaze 27 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:03 PM: gaze 27 is now a second variation on vermeer's lady writing a letter, the first being gaze 16 (formerly grey 16) i'll continue work on this tomorrow after our 5 am trail walk. it will undoubtedly soften, but i'm feeling good about the direction it's heading. the collaging i did earlier today prepared the ground for her, as did a series of calligraphic strokes i made on the canvas before collaging, a few of which can still be seen, such as the faint blue marks on the upper right. i had to wait to receive more of my favorite black, which is far superior to any of the other blacks i have, and is made by sennelier. got to stop early for a meeting.

noon: this morning i dove back into gaze 27, collaging scribbling, scrumbling, tumbling & as the wings of angels flap i receive extraordinary photos of byzantine frescos in mani churches & i plot my next un-move.

short day...gaze 27 continues /  by Philip Tarlow

7:34 PM: the view from the t road returning to crestone.

1:08 PM: yesterday's imagery, based on vermeer's the love letter, has been scrumbled. the new imagery is based on a 19th c. photo of inusk; daughter of the chief of the kickapoo indians. i'm going to stop for the day to prepare for our meeting this afternoon, and pick up again tomorrow morning.

 

 

 

11:11 am: i have a different image in mind for gaze 27, so as soon as i finish editing an actionlab unit, i'll get to work.

8:33 AM: we have an afternoon actionlab meeting, so today will be a shorter than usual day, i'm in the house about to meditate, contemplating gaze 27 & where it might go today. will it be affected by yesterday's faun encounter? how could it not?