WTF /  by Philip Tarlow

1:51 PM: i started my painting day early and am ending early. gaze 23 will travel 500 nft/ to our house for further evaluation and to determine what, if anything needs to change tomorrow morning. 

the colored dots i introduced a little while ago have given the surface a richer texture while at the same time tying together and enlivening collaged elements with areas of pure painting. her surprised expression seems now to be a reaction to the collaged map fragment resembling a flash of light that appears above her right eye. the watch to our left of her face reads more like a celestial body. the overall feeling couild be related to the usa series: mr. robot, where every day realities are upended by menacing forces and the status quo is no longer.

11:38 AM: i got a nice early start and was able to use my first fresh energy, which i've labeled kicking foal. that's kind of how it feels. as i gazed at yesterday's version of gaze 23 it was all i could do to keep from yawning.

B-O-R-I-N-G!

so i launched in with all the means at hand, and here's the current state.

it's got the look of a tattered billboard that has undergone the ravages of time. speaking of which, there's a watch fragment in the upper left from a WSJ article my dear friend louis sent from houston.

 

 

 

this morning i have a wide open attitude, which i want to take advantage of. i'll  post results in terms of changes to gaze 23 as soon as available.

more work on gaze 23 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:07 PM: i went back into gaze 23 this morning. i think it's greatly improved, but i need to bring it to the house to see how it holds up hanging next to the other gaze paintings.

if you compare it with yesterday's version, you'll see that i did work on almost every area of the painting. perhaps the most important change is in the lips. but the eyes as well are more expressive now. and the streaks of light on her garment make more sense now that the area in shadow has been lightened. i have riffed on vermeer's girl with a flute in a total of 5 gaze series paintings thus far. for me, she is the most enigmatic in her gaze of all the women and girls he's used as models. the lighting on her face is very dramatic, far more so than appears in my version, reminding one of Caravaggio.

BELOW: left and center: the painting as it looked yesterday. right:  today's version

back in my studio /  by Philip Tarlow

3:45 PM: end of my painting day. gaze 23 is filled with the painterly mark making that's what i'm all about. scrapes; flourishes of painterly highlights riffing on the far smaller marks of the original. they all help create a provocative , mysterious gaze.

more tomorrow morning. 

 

 

 

 

 

BELOW: at work on gaze 23

2 PM: i'm back in my studio on this heavy monsoon day, with a flash flood watch in place. i'm continuing work on gaze 23, which i decided to re-work 2 days ago. it's still very much in process but, since i skipped a day yesterday when we went to salida for the day, i'm posting this current state. the image is now based upon a detail of vermeer's young girl with a flute. i'm going to get back to it now before my colors dry out on the palette and will post more at the end of my painting day. until my laptop comes back from repair at apple, my posts will begin only once i arrive in my studio; usually around. so no early morning posts form the house until my macbook air is back, around the end of next week.

BELOW: 3 earlier states of gaze 23. from left to right: 7/15; 8/1; and 8/3

 

gaze 23 post-scrumble /  by Philip Tarlow

1:24 PM: i started off the day by scrumbling gaze 23 & then working into it. beside the table where i sometimes work on paintings lying flat, lay an open book on traditional japanese textiles. as i scrurmbled gaze 23, i cast glances at this book. if you have the inclination, check out the story of priness tanabata and the tanabata bridge, and the relationship of this beautiful story to the japanese tradition of weaving.

i was thus emboldened to go further with the little dots which have of late been populating my paintings. you can see what i'm talking about in this detail of an early edo commoner's firefighting coat, side by side with a detail of gaze 23. (if this was the commoner's coat, we can only speculate as to what the upper class coat looked like!)

so what? you might ask.

so, one of the things i love about living in our 2016 world, is the ability we have to cross cultures and traditions, infusing the spirit of now with a richness we could not have dreamed of just a few hundred years ago; playing, as it were, a global piano infused with the music of snake charmers; jazz riffs, carmina burana, robeson and rappers.  

continuing work on gaze 23 revisions /  by Philip Tarlow

2:30 PM: here's the current state of gaze 23 as i prepare to clean my brushes & leave for my appointment. 

i learned a lot from my earlier version of vermeer's girl with a flute. and i am convinced more than ever that vermeer was no different than any of us painterly painters, in that he delighted in fabrics or surfaces whose texture and way of catching the light provide us with the ideal playground for flourishing our brushes. this is, i believe one of the greatest values for a painterly painter. i feel increasingly that the abstract, in and of itself, can't hold a candle to the process of transforming elements in the "real" world into juicy, delicious, sexually provocative gestures where paint meets canvas. 

 

 

 

 

 

1:12 PM: current state of gaze 23 re-visited. it's a riff on a detail of vermeer's girl with a flute. i'll paint for about another hour before cleaning my brushes and leaving my studio to get to a 3:30 appointment.

i knew when i made the changes i did 2 days ago that it would provide an ideal ground for whatever image i chose to paint. there's already a version of this, which is gaze 20. you can find it if you scroll down my home page.

9:12 AM in about an hour i'll continue work on gaze 23, which i painted over a few days ago. below: a draft of my proposal for a gaze show in germany.

gaze 23 re-visited /  by Philip Tarlow

shot this morning on my trail walk, about 1.5 hours up the trail at 9,500 ft. this is a little bridge over the creek, about 3 hours form the lake, where we plan on hiking later this summer.

we had gaze 23 hanging in the house since i last worked on it, july 15th. i became tired of looking at it; always a bad sign. so i brought it to the studio yesterday and began re-working it, until it became the non-representational image you see here. i'll re-visit it tomorrow. since i returned late from my trail walk, i decided it would be more productive to focus my energy on actionlab curriculum edits and on trying to complete my proposal for a gaze series show to the gallery director in aachen, germany. once it's complete, i'll send it to ron at gremillion in houston to review. then he'll forward it to the gallery director, who is a good friend, and we'll se how he responds.

GAZE 23 BEFORE YESTERDAY'S INTERVENTION                  AND AFTER

a few final tweaks & on to the next gaze painting /  by Philip Tarlow

gaze 28  38x38"  mixed media on canvas

11:37 AM: gaze 28 resolved. the tweaks, mostly blending of abrupt transitions in the skin tones, highlights on the t-shirt, ears  & eye whites have been completed and the painting is about to be re-stretched onto a stretcher bar without the masonite backing i use for collaging convenience.  

a couple of firsts: this is the first painting in the gaze series that departs from historical prototypes; mainly vermeer and is based upon a present-time subject. and it is the first (and i hope not the last) portrait of my grandson philip. 

 

 

 

 

here is gaze 28 on it's way to the studio for a few final tweaks and re-stretching before launching into a new gaze series painting.

/  by Philip Tarlow

2:05 PM: i did quite a bit of work although you might not notice at first. i re-painted both ears, worked extensively on HIS right eye, added highlights and adjusted the shape of his face, which was a bit too wide in spots. 

once again, we have to remember: a painting is not a photograph. the late greek painter yannis moralis was once approached by the son of the man whose portrait he had been commissioned to paint. it's wonderful! the man exclaimed. but the nose is not my dad's nose. then his sister visited moralis' studio and commented on how amazing the painting was,; if only his mouth could have been more like her dad's. the wife's problem was with his chin. so moralis invited them all to his studio, sat them down, and said "take it home, hang it, live with it for a month and you'll get used to him."

8:32 AM: a few tweaks to gaze 28 today, and then on to a new painting. i'll post later in the day with updates.

fearless /  by Philip Tarlow

2:30 PM: i made a slight tweak to (the viewer's) right side of his mouth. getting hot ; might cal it a day...

1:42: i spent the last 2 hours going back in after the scrumble. the tone is definitely improved and is lighter overall. it's shaping up, and is beginning to take on an identity, beyond the resemblance or lack thereof to philip. when i look away then glance at it, i am reminded of dimitri's gaze, which is not surprising: piercing; critical; sensitive; a tad pissed off and compassionate. right now, i'd put it up there with the most successful paintings in the series.

getting back to the all important painterly qualities and the integrity of the picture plane, i'm happy with both. that said, i can see what and where i might tweak it after i have a bite to eat. i try not to eat very much before painting, as i find it slows me down and somewhat dulls my perception. 

11:19 AM: i scrumbled the painting, mostly because i felt the overall tone was too dark. now i'm about to work into it while my morning energy is still fresh and strong. the eye immediately relaxed and begins to search, to scan the surface for information. philip, if you're watching, the less defined you are, the more the exquisiteness of your soul emerges. ok, now i'm diving back in!

                        PRE-SCRUMBLE

9:10 AM: this morning i'll move ahead with gaze 28 with, one hopes, less attachment to the does this look like philip? factor. purposeful play. no mind. 

what would you do? /  by Philip Tarlow

8:48 pm: i brought gaze 28 to the house. it needs work, so tomorrow it's back on the easel. 

1:37 PM: my little friend is persisting in trying to fly into my studio. non-stop!

so i took dimitri's advice and proceeded slowly, "surgically" in my interventions. i think it's in a good place, but am waiting for philip's feedback. i may stop for the day; it starts getting uncomfortably warm around this time, and although my evaporative "swamp" cooler helps a lot,i don't like the loud noise it makes. 

i feel fortunate today to have been able to use my fresh morning energy to work on gaze 28, and i think i'll give it a rest and go keep mikela company. she has a painful pinched nerve in her back & lying flat on her back is the only position she can be in until it calms down. lots of ice.

11:08 AM: what would you do?

if you were painting a gaze series painting that happened to be a portrait of your grandson & you came into the studio & saw that it needed more work, but were afraid to screw it up, what would you do? would you launch into your usual scrumble and collage  and sometimes wild gestural mark making mode? or would you be hesitant and timid, afraid to spoil the portrait which, when he saw a photo of he thought looked a lot like him? 

so i asked philip what to do. he showed up in the form of a bird persistantly trying to get into my studio by flying against the north window. he said "go for it grandpa!" so that's what i'm about to do.