shifting gears /  by Philip Tarlow

6:02 pm: for a while now, i've been alluding to a hankering i've been having to return to oil paint. so i looked through some old files containing many of my thousands of photographs. every june, for example, on my walk to the studio, i shoot the blooming cacti, which only last a few weeks.

so i began a drawing for a 16x16" painting in oil on linen. it's not going to be based on this particular photo, but one very much like it. i stretched a canvas and created a tinted ground . i love to paint on tinted grounds. 

i'll continue making the drawing tomorrow, and probably start the new painting on friday.

Spatharis / updated 2-26-17 creek scroll /  by Philip Tarlow

2:44 PM: this morning we were at the charter school working with the kids. so i arrived at the studio relatively late, at around 2 pm. I felt, when i revisited it, that 2-26-17 creek scroll needed something to unite the upper and lower areas. BELOW is a comparative view of how it looked before and after.

there was a flash of inspiration, and it let me know what to do. i wasn't sure it would work, because i had to use a broad brush saturated with color, and i wasn't sure the fragile japanese paper would take it without tearing. i lay the painting down on my big work table and just did it, first shaking the wet brush out on my cement floor. one of the great advantages of having a dedicated studio with a cement floor is that you don't worry about drips and splashes of paint. the more they happen the more the floor gains character.

 

 

 

lucien freud, the great british figure painter who was the grandson of sigmund, would regularly wipe his palette knife on his studio wall. after his death, photos of that wall show how beautiful it had become; a textured mosaic of freud colors.

10:20 am: Photo of the late great Karagiozis (shadow theatre) player Sotiris Spatharis. I shot this in his Plaka workshop, where he made figures like the one he's holding. My studio at the time was a short walk away, and I visited him frequently.

new creek scroll painting today / a newly digitized greek watercolor / discovered drawing /  by Philip Tarlow

3:04 PM: i just now discovered this undated drawing in my flat files. i think it's quite beautiful, but i can't recall when i made it or who the subjects are.

at work on 2-26-17 creek scroll earlier this morning

12:31 PM: i wanted to see how it was working on the second of 3 rolls of japanese paper i got from blick the other day. it's wider, which i kind of like: 18" compared with 12-14. it takes the color well, but, like the others, is quite sensitive to tears, especially when it's still damp from application of the gouache colors i'm using. 

but by far the best feature is the added width, allowing more room for these vertical compositions. i continue to work from a series of photo collages i made at one of our local creeks in the late '90's, which i recently came across in one of my filing cabinets.

you've got to be in the flow when you paint on this paper. there's no going back and correcting. i tried making a preliminary drawing on one of them, a few weeks back, but it didn't work. too constraining, although it will be a week before my glasses arrive, with the new prescription they were able to give me last week,  a month after my cataract/glaucoma surgery, my right eye has definitely improved now that it's healed. that's making more of a difference than i had expected. the blurriness i was experiencing, likely from the swelling, is greatly reduced.

 

 

 

 

 

7:37 AM: this is another of the recently digitized paintings i picked up from reed photography in denver a few days ago. it'a watercolor made in the mid '70's of a neoclassical house in kifissia, a suburb of athens. i made many of these watercolors of in kifissia, where we lived for a few years when dimitri was a baby.

my plan for later this morning is to start a new creek scroll painting on the second of three new rolls of japanese paper i received from blick recently. it will be the first time i test it out, so i'm anxious to see how it takes the color. i'll post photos as available.

 

on david's deck / 2-20-17 creek scroll continued /  by Philip Tarlow

3:43 PM: i did more work on the creek scroll i started on 2/20, on the new japanese paper i got form blick. now i need to test out the other 2 rolls...maybe tomorrow?

just back fomr edwards, and my first task is to load the video footage i shot at the school. especially important right now is some excellent footage of the teacher we're collaborating with, bethany, talking to the kids about the may showcase of the projects they're working on.

before driving to edwards, we were in denver, where i finally got my new glasses proscription. i ordered them online and they should be delivered in about a week. we went by reed photo as well, and i picked up the transparencies of some of my older paintings, which i've been meaning for at least a decade to have digitized. so i got the first batch, which included this 1980 painting of myself on david hockney's now iconic deck, overlooking the pool. at the time, i was house sitting for david, so i had plenty of time to paint and to immerse myself in the rich environment of his house. in the guest room where i was staying was the original pear blossom highway collage, which i saw from about 3 feet every morning when i woke up.

when hockney returned form his travels and saw my painting, he asked to buy it. of course i said yes, and it's now in his collection.

news from denver /  by Philip Tarlow

the lost painting: the artist with 6 workmen 1974 oil on linen 26 x 80" the painting is not complete, as you can see by the unpainted face of the workman on the right.

today in denver we picked up some transparencies i finally had digitized, after putting it off for years. this painting was purchased from my solo show at ora gallery in 1974. i contacted the children of the buyer, who is no longer living, but they were unsuccessful in locating the painting. i haven't given up, and now that i have this digitized image, i'm going to contact everyone who might be of  help in athens and see if i can't locate it. it represents the culmination of about 8 years of studies and smaller paintings of workmen i made at the time in my plaka studio. i realized once i pulled up the digitized image that it is not a photo of the completed painting. the face & hands of the workman on the right have not yet been painted in, and you can see the drawing on the tinted sienna ground.

testing new japanese paper /  by Philip Tarlow

5:32 PM: today i spent most of my time putting together a presentation on my ano kato series for a gallery in nyc. this afternoon, ups delivered art supplies i had ordered last week, which included 3 different kinds of japanese paper i've never before used. before leaving my studio this afternoon, i just had to try out at least one. it surpassed my expectations; far more substantial, a heavier weight paper that doesn't tear with the slightest wrong move....and yet it takes the colors with more sensitivity than the other two papers i'd been using. i just put down a few strokes, and i knew this is the paper i've been waiting for.

yesterday's creek scroll divided in two / 2 more today on japanese paper /  by Philip Tarlow

3:19 PM: yesterday's creek scroll on the heavy paper was asking for something...and i decided it needed to be divided into two equal vertical panels. i think that worked, and they are stronger pieces now which could either stand on their own or be hung side by side.

i made 2 more, this time on the japanese rice paper, using chinese black & red inks, then adding some gouache colors into the mix. the first is very spare; the second more complex. i'll evaluate more in the morning.

2-17-17 creek scroll on heavy paper /  by Philip Tarlow

3:02 PM: today i experimented with a roll of heavier paper i found hiding in a corner a few weeks ago. it had a strong curl from being rolled tightly, so i had to tape it firmly to the wall. it requires a very different approach than the japanese paper, so this first attempt is somewhat heavy handed.

it gave me the feeling that i should try this scroll shape using oil on canvas, which i haven't done in a while. i ofund a partially used roll of claessens brand primed linen, which i may try tomorrow.

3:29 PM: as i looked at it, i found it too disjointed. probably a result of attempting to do with gouache on heavy paper what i had been doing on delicate japanese paper, which requires a lighter touch. so i went over the entire surface with a light wash of acrylic white mixed with flesh color. that's a tricky thing to do over gouache, since the brush will inevitably pick up some of the underlying color and, potentially, create a mess.

it did work, in the sense that the scroll is now more muted, and from afar gives the impression of a tapestry. it was an experiement and, as such, is an interesting artifact of my current process.

2-16-17 creek scrolls 1 & 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:27 PM: yesterday was devoted mainly to video editing. mikela needs some good clips of the kids presenting their projects at the showcase last year, and i discovered quickly that i can't do a little bit of painting followed by a little bit of editing. both are all consuming, so i dove into editing, which i love except for the stupid imovie software. totally non-intuitive, plus it likes to quit just when you've done an hour of work. which you can't save unless you turn it into a movie. don't get me started.

i'm now using the paper we found at menninger art supply in denver. on monday, 3 rolls i ordered online from blick will arrive, and we'll see what the quality is. in the meantime, a large japanese paper store in toronto is researching to find the closest possible match to the paper i just ran out of, purchased 10 years ago at the now defunct NY Central Supply in nyc. she asked me to send a sample with notes on what i like best about the paper. so i put that together and am sending it off to canada. 

the two i did today, which you see below, are good but not great. see what you think. my standards, on the other hand, are very high. below are four examples of chinese 17th and 13th century landscapes. less is more. here's a quote from gong xian:  "nowadays when people paint they do only what appeals to the common eye; i alone do not seek to please the present."

BELOW: upper row & lower left: gong xian (1619-89)  lower right: qian xuan (ca 1235-before 1307) notice how the detail on the lower left brings to mind van gogh. he did not have access to chinese art at the time, but was heavily influenced by the japanese prints finding their way into france during his lifetime. those prints were, in turn, influenced by the great chinese masters of the 13th through 18th centuries.

2-14-17 creek scroll /  by Philip Tarlow

9:49 AM: yesterday i made this painting: 2/14/17 creek scroll. the painting was made over a drawing i had made a few days earlier and then cropped this morning, when i determined that the composition was not working and about 3" of the right side needed to go. i think that did make a significant difference. so that's the last piece of this handmade japanese paper i recently found in my flat files, which had been purchased about 10 years ago at the now defunct NY Central Supply.