gaze 37 continued /  by Philip Tarlow

2:41 PM: here's gaze 37 at the end of my painting day. i think it has definitely progressed; the space works better, and it's still walking that line between descriptive realism & abstraction.  as we take our morning creek walks and i observe the trees, the creek, the budding leaves, the rocks, the same seems to hold true. it's an abstraction that comes alive & is made more compelling by the descriptive elements we recognize and can name.

lets see how it strikes me when i walk in tomorrow morning. for now, i'm feeling tired & ready to clean my brushes.

gaze 37, 38x36" as it looked at 12:35 PM

12:50 PM: after another great early morning walk, i resumed work on gaze 37. this one stands out as, thus far, being the only one in the series not to have a face as the dominant image. i am proceeding slowly, attempting to walk the line between preserving some of the collaged elements that seem more important to the composition and forging ahead defining the more realist elements of milk pitcher & basket of bread. thus far, there is a painterly zest i'd like to maintain. so i'm taking frequent breaks, evaluating what i've done through my, as yet, imperfect lenses. in about a week, i should finally have my glasses, with the accurate progressive prescription. more pics as i continue working.

drawings at the lions eye center/continuing work on gaze 37/wild duck /  by Philip Tarlow

4:16 PM: WILD DUCK, a small gouache i just did based on a photo my son dimitri sent me, shot on andros. the wild duck, from a nearby inlet called yialia, showed up as dimirtri and his cast were rehearsing for the play!

 

 

 

 

 

 

2:38 PM: enlivened by our morning trail walk, (we had been taking out walks in the afternoon) i began the drawing, based on a detail of vermeer's the milkmaid. it's a freeing feeling to have something other than a large face filling the picture space! i have always loved the still life, so this brings me full circle to something i did a lot of during my years in greece. in a way, the riffing i often speak of, akin to jazz, comes more naturally when there's no face; just a loaf of bread & a pitcher of milk. 

the collaged elements add something i could never make up. their colors, the biomorphic shapes push the image past vermeer, into new territory. when i made the underpainting of abstract gestural strokes and patterns yesterday, i kind of knew where it was going & how it would work with the drawing/painting i did today. where will it go tomorrow?

1:02 PM: i did some collaging this morning on gaze 37, and am preparing to draw the image. some of the collaged pieces you see are taken from paintings on paper done by 7 & 8 year old kids who were making large gouache paintings on the floor of my studio last year. the rest are from vintage '50's maps of the maine wilderness, given to me by my friend dan. i'll post more pics once i've started the drawing.

8 AM: as we sat in the waiting room of the rocky mountain lions eye center awaiting my refraction appointment for new, accurate progressive glasses,, exactly 4 months after my glaucoma/cataract surgery, i made 3 drawings.

i love, and have always loved, making drawings of people who are waiting. in greece, it was the passengers on the ferry to & from the island of andros. here at home, it is often people in doctors waiting rooms, airports, schools...you have a limited amount of time before they change positions, which creates an immediacy and urgency, in the good sense. it's a device, one could argue, for getting you out of your planning, scheming mind and directly into present time. personally, this allows me time go straight to my instinctive eye-hand coordination, developed and honed over decades of drawing and painting form life.

stretching canvas for gaze 37 /  by Philip Tarlow

11:23 AM: i'm just now finishing up stretching a canvas for the next gaze series painting: gaze 37. the dimensions are 36x38" & i'm working on which image to start out with, but it will likely not be a face this time.

i will probably begin painting soon, and will, as usual, post pics along the way.

featured collage /  by Philip Tarlow

9/20/14 collage  12x12"  collage on archival paper

12:05 PM: this morning when i entered my studio, i began perusing a collection of plein air paintings & several collages that were stacked up on a table to the left of my Big Red Door. this one struck me as especially beautiful, so i'm declaring it today's featured piece. some of the drawn elements are derived from plein air studies in oil on linen. there's a map fragment, a newspaper clipping containing the words impact, different & assets,  and a section of tracing paper containing the outlines of a face. i have no clue what i was planning on doing with this face; likely intended for a small portrait which never happened. what matters is they found one another in this beautifully balanced composition, and will remain together for the foreseeable future.

looking back... /  by Philip Tarlow

1977, drawing of a sleeping soldier on the ferry to andros. pencil on paper, collection of the artist.

this is one of hundreds of drawings i made on the ferry boat to and from andros. in those days, the boats were slower and the trip took about 3 hours. my mother-in-law niki karagatsi and i always had our drawing materials with us, and began drawing as soon as we reached the main cabin after parking the car in the garage. the subjects were plentiful, as many would sleep or read during the trip. today the ferries economize on space by having airplane style seating. whereas in the '60's and '70's there were relatively spacious open areas with couches. so we would each choose a subject and begin drawing. once we finished, we'd move on to the next, until we arrived in andros or rafina. the more we drew, the better the drawings became, until we both reached a high level of mastery, which then of course extended to our paintings.

once we arrived in andros, we continued drawing & painting all summer long. here are 2 drawings of andriots from chora i made in 1976-7. on the left is a drawing of nona's mother. nona was the founder/owner of a small taverna on the sea, just a 2 minute walk form our house. the whole family worked in the kitchen serving delicious local food, often including fresh fish caught the same day by local fishermen. nonas was temperamental, and if you pissed him off he'd kick you out, no matter who you were.

musings....a bigger plein air? /  by Philip Tarlow

2:17 PM: this is a march 25 plein air painting, which i shot on site. i'm considering making some of these small plein air gouaches into larger paintings in oil on canvas, which i'l like to attempt doing on site. yesterday i found a high school student who is excited about being my assistant on this project in exchange for some mentoring.

so once we're back, i'm going to make preparations and, when the weather is right, go out with my assistant & see what happens.

 

1:59 PM, edwards, colorado we drove up this morning for a 10 am meeting in eagle having to do with actionlab360, which went really well. we're expecting a late winter snow storm this evening, which will last through friday, possibly making for a challenging drive home.

left: leaving crestone, 6am center & right: driving up the 285 towards leadville, on our way to eagle.

edwards prep /  by Philip Tarlow

we're driving up to edwards tomorrow, where we'll attend the showcase at the middle school we've been working with. i'll be videotaping the entire thing, which will go for 3-4 hours. i love interviewing visitors to the event; parents & relatives, friends....and i equally love interviewing the students who are presenting their projects. 

so today is a prep day; printing documents for some meetings we'll have while we're there & packing for the short trip. short or long, i always take way too much. can't help it. 

may 24th is the anniversary of our meeting in 1984 on mykonos. 21 years earlier, i met my first wife on the same island, not far from where i met mikela. here's what we looked like a few days after meeting.

plein air at north crestone creek /  by Philip Tarlow

i went out to a new location on north crestone creek this afternoon.  the spot  i chose was ideal in some ways, especially the fact that there was a flat area to set up my chair & table. on the other hand, i was directly in front of a large fallen tree trunk, which in itself was very beautiful. compositionally however, it was too strong a horizontal element in the composition. finally, in when i made the 3:45 pm version, i turned my chair 30 degrees to the left, thereby avoiding the tree trunk as a central element in my composition. it's very spare, almost abstract, but does i believe capture the essence. which is really the point of abstraction, isn't it?

back out to the creek? /  by Philip Tarlow

5:11 PM: it became too windy & cloudy to go out to the creek to paint plein air. so instead i put my attention on a proposal i'm putting together with 3 core styles of work: my gaze series; my ano kato series; and my plein air paintings, both in oil on linen and gouache on paper.  the proposal will be designed for galleries i intend to approach.

while i ended up not painting plein air today, i did prepare a group of surfaces with heavy, satiné (smooth) watercolor paper taped to foam core, making them very light & easy to carry. so whenever weather permits, i'll be going out fully prepared.

11:09 AM: it's a gorgeous day and it's likely i'll go back out to the creek this afternoon to paint plein air. if so, i'll post pics as the work progresses, as always.

here's a plein air painting in gouache on paper, 2.25x14.5" that was painted 8 years ago, august 20, 2009. the time, as you see in the lower right corner, was 11:22 am. i sometimes note the time to identify the piece, as i usually make more than one in a sitting.

plein air prep: this morning, to make my plein air process easier, i made little dividers out of foam core & used them to separate the main color groups so that I don't have to scrounge about to find the color I need. the plastic container then gets placed in this little backpack, which I use to carry my equipment to the site. that way I have both hands free; one to carry the collapsible chair & table; the other to carry a bag containing a variety of paper painting surfaces. this means I have to choose sites not too far a walk from where I park, or it would get tiring.

videotaping at school this morning / plein air at the creek /  by Philip Tarlow

6:42 PM: after a weather related break of 2 or 3 weeks, i went out to the creek this afternoon & made 1 drawing & 3 gouaches. it was, as usual, exhilarating. i started with a warm up drawing, which serves exactly that purpose; it warms up my eye hand coordination and establishes my feeling in the moment as a platform for something new, something i've never done. at some point, perhaps soon, i make these on a larger scale. at first on site, then in my studio.

9:45 AM: this morning we'll be at the local charter high school and i'll be videotaping the kids presenting their final projects. then this afternoon, i may sally forth to the creek to make one or two gouache paintings on paper in this precious time before the start of mosquito season. if so, i'll post from the creek. in the mean time, my friends, heres a look back form february,2015, when i was in the thick of my ano kato series. (ano kato in greek means topsy turvy) this one, ano kato 25,  is 32x78", oil on portrait linen.