irma re-visited /  by Philip Tarlow

irma 38x36", as it looked before the re-work

2:14 PM: after living with irma since it was completed just over 2 weeks ago, i  decided it was too black and needed a radical re-work. nothing excites me more than a radical re-work! well, maybe i can think of a few things.

irma at the end of my painting day today

so this morning i launched into it while listening to a youtube video of an amazing klezmer band from barcelona, with a vivacious singer. it's unrecognizable, although there's still some black lingering beneath the surface. it's not yet resolved, but it's in a state where i feel comfortable stopping for the day. mornings have become a bit nippy for our morning trail walks, at 35 F this morning and 31 projected for tomorrow morning, so we're going to shift to afternoon trail walks, and we'll be leaving in about 25 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BELOW stages of work on irma today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a few final adjustments before starting a new painting /  by Philip Tarlow

chia following a slight toning down of the red dot

12:42 PM: this morning i un-stretched and re-stretched the last of the 6 late summer paintings to have remained on hard backed stretcher bars: chia and turtle island. in both cases the adjustment was to an area of red which i felt was a bit too strong, pulling the eye away form the composition as a whole. these adjustments were so minor that most viewers see the difference unless i pointed it out.

because, now that they are re-stretched onto stretcher bars without the hard backing, which facilitates collaging, they are now quite light weight and i'll be taking them over to the house as soon as i finish this post.

turtle island following a slight toning down of the red in the lower left

my intention is to have all 6 late summer paintings hanging in the upper floor of our house, which is kind of like a gallery space; large, light, and open. i'll take down the gaze series paintings that have dominated the space for the past 6 months or so, so that it's more like an exhibition. that way, we'll be able, under varied lighting conditions, to get a better sense of how this series hangs together. or not!

i had intended to start a new painting in the late summer series today, but it's a short day because of a couple of local events we'll be attending this afternoon. so it's better if i start something new when i know i have the entire day in front of me.

a new beginning /  by Philip Tarlow

2:04 PM: today is a stormy day with fair to poor light. a perfect opportunity to unstretch the late summer series paintings from their masonite backed stretcher bars onto fresh ones with no backing. that makes them much lighter and more easily transported over to the house, so that they can be hung and evaluated. then, as you see here, i'll cut fresh canvas to stretch onto the now available stretcher bars with hard surfaces, to begin 3-4 new late summer paintings.

as well i shot a few more details of the final version of lucien eclipse, which i'm posting below.

lucien eclipse /  by Philip Tarlow

4:31 PM: after more work on lucien eclipse, this is what it looks like at the end of my painting day.

 

 

 

BELOW: comparative view before my interventions (right( and after.

DETAIL of lucien eclipse moments ago

2:48 PM: trail walk this morning, more work on "lucien eclipse" this afternoon. got to my studio late because of our morning trail walk, and because i had to remake mikela's coffee after discovering a dead spider was part of the brew.

the brown on the right wasn't working. nor was the white collaged paper on the upper left. so i did fairly extensive work, but as far as i can see right now, it's still not there. although it does have a beautifully lyrical air, i must say. it conjures in the imagination red headed cartoon characters; blue eyed dragons yellow haired faceless spirits and branches making love with rocks and water. as much as i love the upper left blue/black passage, it's from a different universe at this point and must go. as a matter of fact, i may actually banish it forthwith!

BELOW: comparative views of the painting yesterday & moments ago:

plein air this morning, and a few tweaks to lucien eclipse this afternoon /  by Philip Tarlow

5:36 PM: this morning i sallied forth to north crestone creek, where i found a new spot to make a couple of paintings in gouache on paper. as always, i entered a zone state the moment i sat down to paint. the landscape on all sides is profoundly stimulating to all the senses. so, in a very real sense, the paintings paint themselves, with me as the vehicle. happy to be of service! my table is so light weight and fragile that i have to be very careful not to bump into it, sending my palette, gouache colors and brushes into the fast flowing creek. it's happened in the past.

DETAIL of the upper right portion of the painting 

4:02 PM: i went out to the creek to paint 2 plein air gouaches this morning. i didn't get enough sleep last night, so making a few improvements to lucien eclipse was a bit of a struggle, but i felt compelled to do it. you can compare yesterdays version on the left below with todays and see if you agree with me that the painting has improved. all the changes i made consist of collaged elements; the most obvious and impactful being the brown paper on the upper right.

 

BELOW

comparative views of lucien eclipse yesterday and today

re-working lucien eclipse /  by Philip Tarlow

4:02 PM: i had very good energy today and tok advantage of it by going back into lucien eclipse, which was created a month ago. being an early example of my late summer series, it lacked the punch of later paintings in the series. it was fuzzy & kind of blah. so i set to work this morning making substantial changes, which were ongoing until about half hour ago. it's always a danger to mindlessly fall into yesterdays solutions, or, in my case too obvious sexual references. up until half hour ago there was a penis in this composition that jumped right out at you. figuratively of course. so i tamed the beast. then a large area of green showed up. nice idea, but didn't work at all. so here's how it looked at the end of my painting day. below is a comparative view, with the august 21st version on the left.

at work on "chia" /  by Philip Tarlow

1:54 PM: for some reason, i'm feeling a bit wacked out today, making it a challenge to work. nonetheless, i did continue work on the new chia, after skipping a day yesterday.

it has some beautiful passages, like the one you see in the photo on the right, and it still needs work. compositionally it's all over the place; doesn't yet know if it wants to be a duck or a kangaroo. the vibrant blue is not acrylic, but an oil stick. many have offered solutions for fixing oil crayons so that they don't come off when you touch them. i just cover them with a thin layer of acrylic mat medium and it seems to solve the problem

so i'm going to wrap it up for the day & continue tomorrow.

trail walk followed by "Aspen Study" /  by Philip Tarlow

7:11 PM: here's a panorama of my late summer series reference paintings, collages & photos. new are the two photos on the far right, which were shot on our trail walk this morning.

3:46 PM: this morning we went on another beautiful trail walk. i brought back a fantastic small "dead" branch with some lichen growing on it. the color was scarlet/vermillion but by the time i got it back to my studio, it had lost it's color. so now i'm spraying it with water periodically, and it seems to be coming back!

i was too tired and not in the right space to continue work on the new chia, (see yesterdays post) so i made a small gouache painting, 35.5x9.5cm/14x3.75", which is a study of some aspen bark i photographed today, which will be valuable once i re-commence work on chia. the more i study the patterns of nature, the more i am amazed by the richness. nothing new, right? but for me, a painter who has been painting plein air my whole adult life, it's a revelation. it just seems to be my moment of recognition, so i'm pursuing it like a private eye, hot on the trail. yes, private eye. 

a demain, mes amis.

starting "chia," 38x38" /  by Philip Tarlow

chia, 38x38"  as it looked moments ago

DETAIL of chia at 2:30pm

2:36 PM: i started work on chia this morning. thus far, i'm taking it very slow.there are 3 collaged elements and, something i haven't yet done in this series, a kind of still life within the composition. i brought 2 crestone conglomerate rocks in from outside my studio and painted them into the as yet spare composition. when i finished for the day and photographed what i had done, it became very obvious that the bit on the right resembles a penis. it was completely unconscious. it's kind of a cool looking penis, which looks like it's wearing a blue wig. you can see it in this detail on the right. very curious i am to see how this evolves tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:53 AM: yesterday afternoon i unstretched the failed dōwd and re-stretched a new blank canvas. a while ago i prepared a tinted ground, which you see here in the foreground, and will soon begin work on the new painting titled chia. in the background are an array of plein air drawings & paintings as well as a few of my 2014 collage series, all of which i glance at while working on the late summer series. click on late summer, below to visit that page.

this image, minus the canvas in the foreground, has just been added to my late summer page. if you scroll down, you'll see it.

dōwd undone /  by Philip Tarlow

3:45 PM: i attempted to tweak this painting today. there was a moment when it was OK (bottom left) and just needed a bit of work on top. it was all downhill from there until finally, i completely fucked it up. those two stage are shown below. doesn't happen often, but today was one of those rare days when it did. i'm in the process of unstretching it, after which it will go into the trash and i'll stretch a new one and start fresh tomorrow.