a 5 month history of gaze 34 / vermeer resurfaces /  by Philip Tarlow

2:53 PM: yesterdays iteration of gaze 34 didn't make the cut. my first glance when i entered the studio gave it a thumbs down. no collaging today; just a few scrumbles before launching in to a different image, inspired by vermeer's the art of painting. i've mined this image before in gaze 13, as you can see on my gaze page. his model, with her garland of leaves headpiece, embodies in some ways the essence of vermeer's timelessness. it's a big part of why over 9,000 people lined up at the entrance to the louvre recently, to try and get through the doors and experience vermeer's paintings in person at the major exhibition currently taking place. his work transcends the extraordinary paintings of his fellow genre painters of the dutch golden age of painting and enters a rarified atmosphere where painterly abstraction co-exists with realism in a way never since equalled. 

fifteen of the paintings in my gaze series are vermeer inspired. gary schwartz, world renowned vermeer scholar and author of the recently published vermeer in detail, called them the best of all the contemporary vermeer inspired paintings he's seen.  click gaze in the drop down menu to see them.

light permitting, i'll continue work on gaze 34 tomorrow.

8:27 AM: it's a sunny morning, but it won't last long. at 8:10 am the temperature was 36.3F/3.3C, with mild highs of 48-58 F predicted today, increasing clouds and scattered rain & snow showers this afternoon....even a thunderstorm is possible. rain & snow showers tonight, changing to all snow after midnight. this is the first of 3 storms predicted to hit our area in the next week. thanks to our local forecaster, keno!

when i get to the studio, that all important first glance will let me know if gaze 34 is resolved,and i can move on to something else. this painting was born in october, 2016 and in early november was considered resolved. after looking at it in the house for almost 5 months, i decided it needed work, which began again in the middle of last month. BELOW: the 12 stages of gaze 34:

continuing gaze 34, shipping gaze 36 & preparing for plein air this afternoon /  by Philip Tarlow

2:57 PM: as i did more work on gaze 34, the skies grew darker as clouds moved in . tomorrow through friday will be stormy, with the greatest chance for precipitation tomorrow night into friday morning. it will likely change from rain to snow after midnight, as temperatures drop and remind us we are living at 8,000 ft. in colorado.

i thought i'd make small changes to the painting, which i thought looked pretty good this morning as i arrived in the studio. as it turned out, i made substantial changes, including collaged elements.  i like how her face has changed. i find there is a balance between representation and abstraction, which i am always aiming for. fortuitous accidents have created unexpected new relationships of biomorphic forms and produced a level of mystery i find increasingly essential in these gaze paintings. i wish the original fayum painter could appear here in my studio and give me his opinion.

tomorrow will be a dark day, and we'll see if it's suitable for painting.

11:37 AM: the end of an era. yesterday we officially let go of our last land line. we used to have 2. most of our friends have let them go. last week we switched from at&t to verizon, which has better coverage in the crestone/baca area, and it was clear we no longer needed to be paying seventy bucks a month. feels a little wierd.

 

                                                                                this morning my first task was to re-shoot gaze 36, which will be shipped to athens, where it will hang in dimitri's theatre, poreia. it's a process, and the first step is getting it unstretched, rolled and placed in a secure tube. i haven't yet been able to get a quote from DHL; so we may have to go to their denver office at the end of the month to get it shipped. 

 

next, i'll prepare to do more work on gaze 34. i'll post pics as they become available.

off day in the studio / back to the creek /  by Philip Tarlow

6:42 PM: after a one day break, i was back at the creek this afternoon. mikela helped me carry my supplies before leaving for an appointment in crestone. after only one days absence, the force and volume of the water had increased dramatically, as early spring snowmelt moves towards peak. i chose tricky spot, with little or no level ground on which to stabilize my chair and little portable table. as i was preparing to squeeze my colors onto the palette, i knocked into a corner of the table, which fell into the creek and was about to get caught up in the swirling waters and be swept downstream. i grabbed it just in time & fished it out.

i painted for about an hour, focused on a an architecture of rocks more subtly elegant than any piece of human architecture i know.

 

gazing in disbelief at gaze 34

1:54 PM: in an hour mikela will drop me off at my creekside plein air site & go to a meeting in town. i woke up feeling like i had just run a marathon, or, more accurately been run over by a truck. plus i had some photos of the edwards kids to adjust & get sent out for a newspaper article. the last thing i felt like doing was painting. as a matter of fact, when i looked at gaze 34, i could barely relate. "who did this?" i wondered.

some days are just like that, and i give gratitude they're so few! as well, i give gratitude for the creek, and how it never fails to transport me to that place with no adequate name, outside conventional time & space. so we'll see how it goes, and i'll post the results later in the afternoon.

another day, another plein air adventure / gaze 34 continues /  by Philip Tarlow

3:23 PM: NEWS FLASH:  neither of us slept very well last night and are exhausted, so we've cancelled the creek for today; no plein air today.

2:51 PM: calling it a day, as far as gaze 34 goes. however my day is just beginning! in a little while we'll be on our way to north crestone creek trail, where, after helping me carry my equipment, mikela will take a walk up the trail while i make a few more plein air paintings. our weather will degrade over the next 3 days, so today is an opportunity to get some more done out by the creek. it's already getting a bit breezy, and i can see some could moving in from the west, but conditions should be ok when we go out in an hour or so.

GAZE 34 comments: more collaging happened this morning, as you can see. much of it old maps i cut up.that's how her necklace went from grey to green; bits of an old map of georgia. she's still not there though and, based on recent experience with this series, anything could happen. there's a bit of disharmony between the image itself, based upon a 1st c. fayum portrait, and the collaged areas, which don't yet fully integrate. i felt the need to break up the form this morning though. the image was becoming too solidified into a portrait, rather than a painting. this been an ongoing issue. it's a little like seeing people in a stereotypical way, as opposed to seeing their fullness of being. pardon me for lapsing into crestone-speak, but that's the way it is. as i have said over and over, for me it's all about process. which is why i see the history of art as an unfolding  story, rather than a series of landmark events through time. i know my buddy, the great story teller vermeer would have agreed.

11:27 AM: getting a late start. i plan on continuing work on gaze 34, while making preparations for this afternoon's plein air excursion. the lady awaits, on my easel....

new plein air posted daily / work will continue on gaze 34 around 10am /  by Philip Tarlow

7:25 PM: i made 2 more plein air paintings at the creek this afternoon. i made one of them; the one on the right on a surface i had tinted with ink 2 years ago. i didn't like how it took the paint. nor did i like working on the tinted surface, which used to be my favorite thing. 

2:26 PM: i took my time making adjustments to gaze 34 today. slowly, slowly (form the greek sigá-sigá) i added highlights and made other adjustments. it was as if i were in the presence of the original sitter and painter. i felt the poignance of her soul, as reflected in her eyes, and the quiet majesty of her being. not unlike my friends, the rock people, whom i've been visiting every afternoon for the past 3 days, she is silent witness to events.

and now, i'll clean my brushes, make my way over to the house and venture out with mikela to the creek again, to make more plein air paintings. it's like i have my morning job & my afternoon job. and, although it's not as exhausting i'm sure, it's parallel to my son dimitri's life over the past few months; going back & forth between his theatre, poreia, and the national theatre to rehearse and direct and act....a one man band, as it were.

8:09 AM: i'll be heading to the studio at around 10 to continue work on gaze 34 and prepare new surfaces for my ongoing afternoon plein air paintings in gouache on paper. i'm posting the new plein air paintings to this page of my site, so you can view the entire series:click on the link BELOW:

BELOW: as promised yesterday, below is a comparison of a plein air painting from 2014, in oil on linen, with a new one in gouache on paper.  my observation is that the current series is more spare, with more space and fewer unnecessary marks. less descriptive you might say. more essential.

continued work on gaze 34 / more plein air today /  by Philip Tarlow

6:31 PM: just back from the creek with two more paintings in gouache on paper. it's interesting to compare the paintings i made last time i was at the creek, over a year ago, to what is emerging now. i'll post one of the older ones tomorrow and put it next to a few of the six, so far, new ones, so you can judge for yourself.

2:51 PM: wrapping up for the day & preparing for another afternoon of plein air at the creek. the image has yet again morphed, despite what i predicted yesterday (that it would remain as it was). it is now once again inspired by a female 1st c. fayum portrait in encaustic on wood panel. i did extensive work, first going over the image with a rough first draft, then going into it with successive washes of diluted color, scraping, going back in, etc. here's how i'm leaving it, and i'll see in the morning where it wants to go next.

yesterday's creek plein air paintings / more work on gaze 34 / 2 more plein air paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

8:26 pm: i made two more plein air paintings in gouache on paper this afternoon. our near record breaking warm temperatures continue, and i didn't even need my wool cap, which i wore yesterday. i found a spot with flat ground, making it convenient to place my little table & chair with no fear of them tipping over.

2:32 PM: the gaze 34 image shifted, and is now inspired by a 19th c. b&w photograph of a native american chief. it needs more work, but i have a sense that the image itself will remain as is. i've been looking at this photo for months, and he wanted to emerge but i couldn't find the right space. i can see right now as i look at it what changes i would make. they involve the shape of his face and lights and shadows, but not a radical change to the imagery. right now i'm going to clean up & prepare to go out to paint at the creek again. i'll post whatever comes out of this plein air excursion once i'm back.

11:41 AM: yesterday afternoon i made 2 small gouache paintings on paper at n. crestone creek. it was the first time i had been back to the creek to paint plein air in over a year. it's a bit of a logistical challenge, but well worth it. i asked mikela to take a few shot of me painting so i could post them today. we plan on going out again today to take advantage of the unusually mild temperatures. mikela takes a walk up the trail while i paint.

right now i'm about to resume work on gaze 34, and will post pics as available. BELOW: on the left, the current state of gaze 34 before starting work today. on the right: gaze 36, which i was looking at this morning in our living room. it contains some solutions i'd like to incorporate into gaze 34. since these solutions happen spontaneously, i'm going to have to use the 36 discoveries as a loose framework for how i proceed today. 

resuming work on gaze 34 /preparing for plein air /  by Philip Tarlow

3:23 PM: almost time to go out to the creek and paint. here's the most recent state of gaze 34; no longer comical, but still enigmatic and certainly more obviously inspired by a fayum portrait. work will resume tomorrow morning, when my experience at the creek in an hour or so will most certainly have an effect.

 

 

 

 

1:27 PM: following our excellent day with the local HS students yesterday, i'm back in the studio continuing work on gaze 34.  the image has shifted to one of my favorite fayum portraits. yesterdays collaging, scraping and general scumbling has provided a rich environment for this new image. at the moment, he appears to have mickey mouse ears, and is appropriately enigmatic/comical in his gaze. ridiculous, i might even venture to say.

let's see how it evolves. in the mean time,' i'm preparing my first foray out to the creek to paint plein air, for now in gouache on paper. i'll update when i have pics to post.

BELOW: the stages of my gaze 34 revision, chronologically starting form the upper left:

school this morning /  by Philip Tarlow

9:23 AM: this morning we'll be at our local school, working with the teacher & HS kids on developing their projects using our platform. i may be able to make it to the studio by 1-ish to continue work on gaze 34, before leaving for our walk around 4. below you see the stages of this painting form the moment i began re-working it through yesterday afternoon. the image at first fills the picture plane, and then begins breaking apart as collaged elements, crayon marks and acrylic brush marks begin appearing. the blue border is mad eup of strips of an old map. i rubbed it extensively with acrylic matte medium to remove the more exposed layers of printed ink, which would have faded over time when exposed to the light. in effect, i aged the color on these strips in moments, so that the owner of the piece wouldn't be surprised.

continuing gaze 34 revisions today /  by Philip Tarlow

3:21 PM: stopping here for the day; going out for a walk up the trail now...

 

 

 

 

 

1:42 PM: ok, so i dove right in and am, as usual, making a radical transformation. here's where it's currently at. feels so good to resume my collaging and have those unexpected surprises when a shape i cut does something with the underlying paint that creates a new, suggestive relationship of forms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12:04 PM: today is like the morning after; it seemed great yesterday afternoon, but this morning i can't bear looking at it and ma about to start collaging and scraping and painting and re-visioning this pup.