landscape series 4 progresses...slowly-slowly /  by Philip Tarlow

3 PM: i had a sudden wave of tiredness, so i'm stopping for the day. it looks like i'm going to stick with oil pastel, crayon, colored pencil & graphite; something i've never done before on this scale, and on portrait linen. i'll continue tomorrow, but it feels close to completion. BELOW are some details.

                                            ABOVE: yesterdays version on the left, todays on the right

12:50 PM: this morning i continued work on landscape series 4, continuing to limit myself to colored pencils, crayon, graphite & oil pastel, but not employing oil paints. and it may remain that way. it has a delicate presence that i'd like to maintain, and using oil paints might upset the balance. 

i'm going to continue working and see where it takes me, so i'll post more pics and commentary at the end of my working day, in 2-3 hours.

landscape series 4: taking the drawing further /  by Philip Tarlow

2:50 PM: i was a bit tired & in pain from yesterdays drive through the snow & ice and the work the dentist did on my molar. the good news is that she was able to avoid a root canal, although she had to work right next to the nerve. so i came into the studio after 11 and was a bit slow getting to work, i was surprised to see myself taking the drawing even further without fixing the crayon, colored pencil & graphite and starting to work in oil.

 

 

we're going to walk up to the stupa in moments, so i'm stopping & will continue tomorrow

landscape series 4; the drawing /  by Philip Tarlow

          landscape series 4, 38x36"  as it looked at 3 pm

2:41 PM: today i began the drawing for landscape series 4 on the newly stretched 38x36" portrait linen. there's lots of ice in the photo i'm working from, which was shot on one of our recent walks up to tashi gomang stupa. the drawing is almost complete, but not quite, and will have a chance to gestate while i have my root canal tomorrow.

i plan on taking it very slow with this one, the drawing is so delicate and tender, it requires lots of space to breathe. before starting to paint, i'll spray it with fixative so that the colored pencil, crayon and graphite marks don't smear. my use of 5 or 6 different colors in of course intentional and based entirely upon my gut, much like my life. we associate different colors with different moods, but also with content. cucumbers are GREEN; red peppers RED. rocks are usually some variation of GREY. a blue or red or green ROCK conjures a fantastical world. as a matter of fact, the world IS fantastical! remove the cloak of expected, learned reality and you begin to give space to the fantastical. up to a certain age, depending on the culture, children see only this fantastical reality. so we can all REMEMBER it! it's at the tip of our memory. 

a bit more work this morning, and now "landscape series 3" is hanging in the house for evaluation/"sexual innuendo" /  by Philip Tarlow

1:24 PM: from time to time when i'm between paintings, i pull out this 16x16" experiment in oil on linen and do some work on it. or rather, i play on it.  it started out over a year ago as a failed landscape (i think) and then became my playground, where anything goes and nothing is sacred. actually, now that i think about it, that's the way all painting should be! you care the most when you don't give a shit! 

sexual innuendo is the title it never had. but today i decided it has enough of a vulva-esque passage to deserve it. i love that it's a stand-alone. it reminds one of some of the pieces in the collage series, however it's really catagory-less, poor baby! maybe i'm just preparing for the root canal i'm due to have on thursday. now there's a sexual innuendo!

                      YESTERDAY AFTERNOON                                                        NOON TODAY

noon: i did a bit more work on landscape series 3 this morning, then brought it over to the house for evaluation in morning, afternoon & artificial lighting tonight. it doesn't have that sketchy freshness of the previous two, but it is a beautiful & compelling image. i lightened the tall grasses in the foreground, gave some dimensionality to the large horizontal tree trunk and added small but critical blue accents at the very top left.

starting work on landscape series 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

5:36 PM: an unusual late afternoon intervention has taken place. we stopped by the studio following our walk up to the stupa and, although the sun had set, i turned on the lights & made a few changes. here's how she looks now.

the painting carries further (it can be read at a distance of 50 feet), and has a less descriptive, more energetic, gestural feel, transmitting to the viewer more of a sense of the presence of the creek. compared with the earlier version, it goes further in the direction of creating a language. without a language, said matisse, an artist has no foundation for creating good/great art.

 

 

 

 

 

2:16 PM: this morning, after a 1 day break. i followed up on the drawing i made on saturday for landscape series 3. i felt it was getting too busy, with not enough breathing space, so i went back in a few minutes ago and took out the work i had done on the top 1/3. 

you can see the progression below, starting earlier this morning on the left, then the stage where i t got to busy in the center and finally, the current state, on the right. i'll pick up where i left off tomorrow.

brunch guests today; no painting /  by Philip Tarlow

10:52 AM: in 10 minutes our brunch guests will arrive & we'll have a fun sunday connecting & exchanging stories. i'll pick up tomorrow where i left off yesterday with the drawing for landscape series 3. 

frequently a short pause actually works in my favor, giving me space to dive back in with fresh energy. until then, i leave you with this shot of a rare piebald deer i photographed yesterday outside our house. in all our 23+ years in crestone/baca, we've never spotted one!

a forgotten self portrait /  by Philip Tarlow

                                            DETAIL

1:17 PM: i got an early start today and completed the drawing for landscape series 3, 38x36" on french portrait linen. i need to be fresh to start painting, so i'll wait until tomorrow morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7:41 am: a friend in athens just sent me this image of a 1966 self portrait, painted in my athens studio at the time, which was on heraclitou st, near kolonaki square. i have no memory of painting it, and am still integrating this new piece of the puzzle.

it is part of an exhibition of self portraits from the collection of dionysis fotopoulos, which opened december 12 at the cultural institute of the national bank of greece in athens. the exhibition is titled "Εαυτούς και Αλλήλους," which means literally themselves and each other.

landscape series 2, final photo /  by Philip Tarlow

12:52 PM: the new owner of landscape series 2 dropped off the painting this morning so that i could make some minor fixes to the smudged white corners, which had rubbed against a piece of cardboard on my work table and picked up a little grime. on a stark white portrait linen canvas, everything shows.

also, i'll tape the edges, using a roll of archival artist tape that fedex will deliver soon. so that when the painting is hanging in their home you can't see the staples along the edges. i also sprayed it with fixative so that the areas where i used crayon won't rub off. and finally, i'm going to attach a wire to the back, which they prefer instead of the single hook i usually use. this will make it far easier to adjust the painting on the wall so that it's absolutely straight.

i also shot a final photo of the painting, which includes some small additions to the area beneath the red rock on the left. this will give me an accurate record for my archives. it's a very subtle painting, difficult to reproduce digitally. no matter how much i adjust the image, much of the subtlety found, for example in the areas where i employed colored pencils to make the preliminary drawing, is lost. if you click on the detail on the right, you'll see what i mean.

as i said a few days ago, before it was purchased, i had been tempted to do more work on this painting, which likely would have negatively affected the fragility of the piece, as well as interfering with what i would call the breathing space it has. paintings have a life of their own, and this one knew quite well what it wanted! oh, and finally, it needs a signature! i'll repost once i adjust the image of the signed painting.

this piece can now be found on the very top row of representative paintings on the home page of this site.

2:04 PM: the painting you see above has now been signed. i don't like large signatures, so you'll have to make the image larger & look for the signature on the lower right, in red.

preparations and musings /  by Philip Tarlow

5:55 PM: today was one of those preparation days. preparation for a 2 day trip to boulder for critical actionlab meetings, and stretching of a new 38x38" portrait linen canvas, which will allow me to dive back into work on friday morning. generally, a short break such as this allows me to re-group and begin conjuring a new painting. 

what's new in this process is the feeling i have, similar to the state i was in before going into my studio to create a new collage-based painting. like my gaze series, which were all collage based, shifting in unexpected ways hourly. 

now, however, i'm not using collage and am working on portrait linen, usually reserved for detailed, realist oil paintings such as this one: the view from my athens studio towards the tower of the winds, painted in 1974, now in a private collection.

using portrait linen in this new way, employing crayon, graphite stick in addition to oil paint, and scraping into the still wet paint, gives me that same feeling of anything goes. calligraphic strokes with graphite or crayon take the painting to a very different place and allow me to employ my well honed skills at painting, for example, the details of a branch while at the same time cutting loose with full body engagement.

landscape series 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

6:03 PM: i wasn't sure this painting was resolved after working on it this morning. it sold before i had a chance to intervene, and the paint hadn't even dried. one of my weaknesses has been adding to a painting that didn't really need it.

so, in a sense, this sale saved me, and the painting. it represents a coming together of more than a decade of plein air paintings and collages, some in oil; others in gouache and mixed media.

it may be the start of something......