one last tweak to gaze 35 /  by Philip Tarlow

4:26: i realized last night that i had gone a bit too far in pushing back the black area to the left of the head in gaze 35. so i very gently modified it to create a bit more contrast, without throwing off the delicate balance of the painting. BELOW left is the painting as it looked this morning, and on the right, how it after slightly darkening the black

lately i've been looking at this gaze painting (below left) , which was the first in the series. the more i looked, the more i found wrong with it. whereas with the successful ones, it's just the opposite. so, after making the small adjustment to gaze 35, i scrumbled  gaze 1 and began painting into it. thus far, there is a similar ghost image as appears in gaze 35. but i usually regret repeating a solution i discovered in a previous painting; these discoveries have to just happen. you can't force them. a good friend just messaged me on facebook that "it looks finished to me." maybe she was right, but it's too late now! so here's what it looked like, on the left, and how it looks now. i kind of feel like i'm infusing the older versions with all that i've learned along the way, which includes how to work more sensitively with acrylics as well as how to introduce levels of ambiguity while capitalizing on the suggestive biomorphic forms created by collaged areas of paper.

compositionally at least, i feel the painting has improved. the yellow area to the right of the figure in the earlier version was dead space. filler.....let's see how things unfold tomorrow.

and one final, all important tweak... /  by Philip Tarlow

12:59 PM: thanks in advance for putting up with these repeated blogs about changes to the now epic gaze 35. as always, i'm convinced this is the best so far in the series.the area of black to the upper left of her head was bothering me. in such a delicately balanced composition, a seemingly minor thing can create dissonance. it's always a temptation, when i do go back into a painting in this series, to become radical and change everything.not this time. so far at least.

if you study the two images below; yesterdays version on the left, today's on the right, i think you'll agree with me that what i did this morning has made a big difference. i "pushed back" that dark area on the upper left. as a result, and see if you agree, your eye is no longer drawn to that area and instead is free to peruse the entire surface, as well as more deeply appreciating the "ghost image" to the right and the unforeseen suggestive forms created by the biomorphic shapes of the collaged paper. the only other intervention i made was to slightly heighten the whiteness of the earring and a few pearls on her necklace.

sensitive tweaks to gaze 35 /  by Philip Tarlow

1:15 PM: mikela & i are usually on the same page; today even more so. she walked over just as i was about to make some very carefully sensitive tweaks to gaze 35, without upsetting the delicate, impossible to recreate balance. and she was at exactly the same point with her work on actionlab360. 

she came over a second time, when she had just completed her work. the moment she opened the studio door, i was declaring gaze 35 resolved. the true test will be tomorrow morning, after i've brought it back to the house & hung it. right now, i'm considering this a breakthrough painting in the series. one of the reasons for this is the interplay of the ghost image peeking through on the right, which works both as content: revealing the story behind the face, and as form, creating a subtle interplay of biomorphic shapes that, i believe, allow the suggested forms to become equal in importance to the realist content of face, necklace, letter and so on.

one other breakthrough i'd point to is my success at using acrylics in a way that is as painterly as if i were using oils, with their capacity for infinite progressions of sfumato. this is an italian word derived from fumo, which means smoke or fumes. oil paints allow for a soft transition between tones; something that was not possible with egg tempera, the medium being widely used until the 15th c., when oil paints supplanted it.

back to gaze 35 with fresh energy /  by Philip Tarlow

2:32 PM: i needed a break from gaze 35 which, not unlike most of the paintings in my gaze series, has gone through many permutations, each layer enriching the next. this morning i scrumbled over the previous version, using the same painting for inspiration (the love letter) but zooming in on the face of the mistress, who is showing the letter to her maid. still evident under the scrumble is the previous layer showing the mistress with her lute. this lends a certain unexpected poetry to the entire image, which i like. so i stopped here for the day, and we'll see how i feel about it tomorrow morning.

i had been despairing a bit that my passion for the gaze series had ebbed. you can never know what's brewing however, and the key is to persist without being pushy. when i saw my eye surgeon last week, he continued me on a reduced schedule of 2 kinds of drops to reduce the swelling behind my retina, which had already improved considerably, one of them dilates my pupil and that lasts almost 24 hours. this is resulting in continued blurry vision in my right eye, which is a drag but is not keeping me from working. i'm trusting there's some deeper reason for this having to do with the quality and progress of my painting. even so, it sometimes just seems like a big pain in the ass! 2.5 more weeks till my next visit and, if all goes well, i'll be able to discontinue the drops and finally experience clear vision.

at the same time, i'm reaching out in an attempt to organize an exhibition of the gaze series in washington, d.c. to coincide with the opening of the vermeer show at the national gallery in october. if his expenses are paid, my old friend gary, who is an internationally acclaimed rembrandt and vermeer scholar and author, has agreed to fly over from amsterdam to give a joint presentation with me at the gallery hosting my show. all this takes a lot of planning, and there's no certainty it will happen.

cleanup & organization /  by Philip Tarlow

11:42 AM: on my return to the studio after 3 days away it is clear i need to devote at least a day to cleanup & organization. mikela is on a parallel track today with actionlab360, so as usual we're in sync. when i return to gaze 35, a complete re-work will begin.

this is a detail from vermeer's the art of painting which beautifully illustrates how and why he stands out in 17th c. genre painting and, in my mind, rises to the level of timeless master.

looking back /  by Philip Tarlow

4:42 PM  lying on kat's couch in edwards, i'm looking back at early gaze series paintings. this is a detail from gaze 6, 48x48" shot on january 19, 2016, about 15 months ago. and below, the most recent gaze update: gaze 35, which i'm still working on. i'm less focused on the details of faces, hands, bodies and more interested in the composition as a whole & the delicate balance, as i've said, between realist depiction & abstraction.

fooling around /  by Philip Tarlow

plein air collage 1  8x11"  gouache, colored pencil & collage on paper

2:31 PM: i used collage & colored pencil to transform one of yesterdays plein air paintings, which now looks like this.not certain it's resolved, but that will have to wait till we're back.

by the way, in case you're wondering, the fragments of scribbled notes were found lying on the trail as i went to look for a site. i thought of trying to locate the owner, but that would be near impossible; there is no identifying name on the notes. it was their destiny to become part of my artistic process.

 

12:47PM: today is prep day for our trip to denver & edwards. my current coffee strategy is to make all the coffee in advance so i don't have to bring the moka pot, and can make mikela a quick thermos-full before leaving for school, where we need to be at 8am. that, plus a little pre-packing prep are the reasons i arrived so late in my studio.

i consider yesterdays plein air gouaches sub-standard, so i'm going to fool around with them, possible using collage and who know what else to transform them or maybe destroy them. i'm in a wacky mood, so it might work out. i'll post pics as the afternoon progresses.

into the wild /  by Philip Tarlow

3:26 PM: conditions were not great. it was colder and windier than predicted. that, in addition to the face that i chose a spot in the shade precariously close the the creek, made my plein air experience today less than ideal. nonetheless, i made 4 small paintings in gouache on paper, two of which i consider failures. i'm resting until 4, when we leave for the passover seder we're invited to in alamosa.

12:02 PM: it's a gorgeous, albeit still a tad chilly day for plein air painting. so i prepared my materials and am setting off for north crestone creek. i'll post pics from the site, signal permitting.

more work on gaze 35 /  by Philip Tarlow

gaze 35, 32x32" at 3pm today

3:51 PM: at the end of my painting day, i'm thinking gaze 35 needs to be hung in the house for evaluation by both of us. especially since this one is somewhat of a departure from the rest of the series. i did a bit more work, being careful not to upset the balance between realist & abstract elements. there's something i've been aspiring to for over a year, since i began the gaze series. to a large degree it's exactly that balance between the biomorphic shapes created "accidentally" by collaging paper onto the surface while the painting is lying flat on a table, largely preventing me from planning or plotting the effect these elements might have on the whole, and the realist elements. as well, it is the successful translation of vermeer-ness to a contemporary idiom. of course henry geldzahler, in his little volume looking at pictures, claims that is a given, since it is being made now. and how can we tell the value of contemporary art? henry said, in the same little book: "if you look and can remember, a day, a week, a month later, the way it's made, the way the forms fit, the color-message of the picture, then it's probably good."

 

 

 

 

 

2:24 PM: there's something keeping me from doing my usual radical re-work of this painting. so all i did was some work on the hands & arms, the lute & the maid's apron. the dabs of color from a collaged sheet of paper on which i had been testing my watercolors was bothering me. it popped too much. so that's been pushed back. but most of the major elements and the shapes created by previous collaged areas are intact. they create a counterpoint to vermeer's own carefully weighed and balanced shapes.

as i type this post and glance over at gaze 35, i can see that the maid's right arm needs work, so that's where i'll be going next. all this very frank, very transparent commentary on my process is intentional. unlike some, i feel it's important to de-mystify the process of making art. i don't think that takes away from it's value, and that the attitude that art and artists are on a pedestal is antiquated.

gaze 35-slow but steady work on a very windy day /  by Philip Tarlow

gaze 35, 32x32" at 3pm today

3:26 PM: i got a bit of a late start today due to the timing of a skype with my old friend gary, in the netherlands. gaze 35 is, at this point, somewhat of a departure from the vermeer inspired paintings that comprise the rest of the series. the balance between realist & abstract is almost perfect, i'd say. the fact that, for many of you, this image is an integral part of your art history vocabulary helps. it's as though i'm riffing on a well known tune, and if i take it 60% of the way, you know the rest. i don't need to spell out the details. as a matter of fact, that would take away from the impact of gaze 35.

the dog eared love letter post card sent to me by my friend & mentor yannis tsarouchis in the '70's sits facing me at this desk in my studio. a reminder not only of our friendship, but of the importance of this painting.

what, i wonder, would vermeer say? and gorky? would archile gorky recognize the ways he helped shape my particular vision? how about dekooning? would he get just how deeply rooted those early semi-abstract figures of his are in my psyche? i say yes to all these questions!