drawing for landscape series 8, day 2 / January 26, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:03 PM: today i continued work on landscape series 8. since i already commented on the purpose of this under-drawing in yesterdays post, i won't repeat myself, other than to reiterate just how tempting is sometimes is to develop this drawing to the point where it can be considered to be the final version of the painting. despite that, it's very likely this drawing will be painted over, as i have done with the others in the series, leaving only bits of it peeking furtively through.

the white cord you see around my neck is attached to my iphone. for about an hour, i was on the phone completing some paperwork. actually, i've found that talking on the phone while i work helps keep my mind out of the way.

day 1: landscape series 8, 38x35" / January 25, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:31 PM: this morning i started the under-drawing for landscape series 8. as this series has evolved, the "under-drawing" i speak of has become an essential part of my process. it is a precise, detailed drawing in colored pencil, oil pastels and crayon, and is based upon photos i've taken at the creek. it peeks through the over-painting, in oil. the over painting is inspired by one of the many plein air oil paintings, all 16x16," from 2012 to 2014. so i'm consciously making a very time consuming drawing, which has a delicate beauty of it's own with the awareness that soon most of it will disappear.. it is, however, an essential element in the final painting; the heartbeat of the final painting, one could say.

"landscape series 7" resolved? / January 24, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

12:14 PM: upon entering the studio this morning, i cast my quick-take glance at the painting. nothing jumped out at me that was disturbing the balance of the whole. on the contrary, i began noticing and appreciating the subtle balance of gestural/painterly marks and the delicate and more precise under-drawing in colored pencil and crayon.

yesterday i discovered a few boxes full of 16x16" plein air oils painted mostly in the spring & fall of 2014. i made a selection of the ones that seemed most promising as candidates for my landscape series, and will be launching into the next one today or tomorrow. here you see one of those i selected.

is "2017-18 landscape series 7" resolved? / January 23, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

10:59 AM: yesterday afternoon we went for a walk near our house. on the way back w estopped off in the studio to evaluate the painting. we both agreed that the green in the central area of the painting was a problem.

so i did something uncharacteristic. mikela returned to the house as the sun was setting, and i did more work on landscape series 7 under electric lighting; something i very rarely do. as i look at it right now, what i did is definitely an improvement, but the deep reddish color in the triangular shape in the center of the composition seems too strong & needs to be pushed back or changed in some way. so that's what i'll attempt to do before 1 PM, when we have to leave for salida.

BELOW: the painting before (left) and after removing the green area yesterday afternoon.

landscape series 7, day 3: getting messy / January 22, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

7:09 PM: after our late afternoon walk, we stopped at the studio and i took out the green in the center-right. in a rare 20 minute session under electric lighting, i worked at lightning speed, driven by the ever present need to find balance.

3:12 PM: after about 3 hours of continuing yesterdays process of drawing on the canvas with colored pencils, crayon & oil pastel, i cut loose a few hours ago and broke out the oil paints. working form the same plein air oil painting i used for the last one i did: landscape series 6, i allowed the meticulous colored drawing to become the underpainting, scraping, rubbing and painting over it, so that bits still show through.

although it's obvious that landscape series 6 & 7 are based upon the same image, they come off like 2 riffs on the same melody. there's a thelonious monk-ness about them that i like. todays version is more evocative of animal and plant life; a wolf here, a pooch or lion there. and, if you are so inclined, you will find a breast or two.

landscape series 7, day 2 / January 21, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:18 PM: i continued work on landscape series 7 today, and am stopping early for the day.

i'm taking it very slow, resisting any temptation to move from colored pencil to oils or oil pastel. this painting has such a delicate balance of tones that i literally dare not disturb it at this point. the shapes, derived from water & rocks, interact with subtle harmony, allowing the imagination to fill in the blanks. a cloudy, snowy day contributed to the meditative space in my studio, and i felt, as i worked, that this mornings 15 minute meditation continued unbroken.

new painting / January 20, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:15 PM: i started the drawing for 2018 landscape series 7. the stretched linen is 38x38." for the moment, the entire drawing is in colored pencil, but that will change in the next day or two.

the virgin white portrait linen pulsates with the pastel colored pencil hatchings. oranges, violets and blues are punctuated by an occasional deep red. life is being breathed into the fine weave of the canvas, which may awaken tomorrow to snow, while the rocks and water it is inspired by are covered in ice.

10:54 AM: so today i'm stretching the canvas for the next in my 2017-18 landscape series. i'll post pics as soon as the drawing begins. in the mean time, here are a suite of drawings i made on our recent nyc/washington, d.c. trip.

a new painting commences...hey, not so fast, tarlow! / January 19, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:34: woman in landscape following a few tweaks in the past hour. if you compare the upper central region, you will notice a yellow ochre/tan addition, which adds needed warmth, and a slight reduction in intensity of some of the red marks, which were a bit too dominant, and drew the eye to them at the expense of the whole composition, which now, in person at least, reads as one coherent whole. rocks and water are still clearly the main characters in this story. so, is this an abstract painting? lyrical abstraction is one term that might fit.

1 PM: upon entering the studio, my first glance at the revised and re-revised woman in landscape told me that it was, well....blah! no chi.

so i scrapped my plan for starting a new painting and continued work on this one. the very first thing i did, and i'll admit there was some anger in my passionate movements, was to scratch and scrape the surface of this poor, delicate portrait linen until i practically made a tear in it. but that created movement, and a few deKooning-esque passages. they remind me somewhat of one of my heroes: dekooning because they have that drawing in motion feel of some of his woman series paintings, which by the way also have some level of anger. but, unlike dekooning, i wasn't feeling anger at women; rather a kind of frustration at the process, and how, no matter how much you think you know what's what, you most certainly don't! so you just keep pressing in, pressing into it, until it sings. or so you think....and the process continues.

and, if successful, you look at it a few weeks or months later and say to yourself, "did i do that? how the fuck did i do that?"

well, you didn't! and that's the whole point, isn't it?

BELOW: detail of one of dekooning's women series paintings:

BELOW: the evolution of woman in landscape, arranged chronologically starting on the upper left (december 2, 2017)

8:15 AM: a few hours i'll be back in the studio starting the process of creting a new painting in my 2017-18 landscape series. that will mean un-stretching one of the 38x36" paintings i feel can be sidelined and cutting & stretching a new piece of portrait linen.

in the mean time, as i complete my coffee shenanigans, i shot this pic of a 1999 gouache on paper, which sits comfortably protected from the sun, on our kitchen counter.

updates on the new painting will be posted as the day progresses.

woman in landscape re-re-revisited! / January 18, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2 PM: as soon as i walked in the door to my studio this morning, i began revising what i did yesterday. i decided to use a different plein air oil painting (which you see below) as a reference; the other one was a bit too spare for what i had in mind.

i think i'll stop here for the day and prepare a new canvas for the next painting in this series. i'm flooded with ideas after seeing such great art in nyc & dc. when i say ideas, i really mean sensations. how do you feel when you see a lot of great art in a short space of time? i'm planning a post containing some of the most beautiful of the many works we saw and photographed. it should be ready soon.

renewed energy/revising "woman in landscape" / January 17, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:36 PM: woman in landscape was the first in the 2017 landscapes series, painted on december 2, 2107. it hung in our living room for a period of time, but never grew on either of us. finally today, after returning from our 2 week trip to nyc & dc, i decided it should be radically revised.

as i sometimes do when i'm re-working an older image, i turned it upside down on my work table. i scraped, rubbed and then went over a good part of the canvas with a warm white. i was referring to a 16x16" plein air oil painted at the creek on august 10, 2011, which you see on the RIGHT.

traces of the underlying painting peek through in the current phase, creating a play of lines and colors hinting at the vibrance and aliveness of the creek. as i rubbed over the original woman in landscape, areas that had been drawn in colored pencil, crayon and oil pastel smeared into the white pigment, resulting in a warm glow suffusing the entire image. early philip guston comes to mind, as do certain twombly images. lets see where it wants to go tomorrow. thus far, a constant in this series seems to be a painterly, layered picture plane, conjuring the sensual, roiling vivaciousness of the creek.

BELOW: on the LEFT: woman in landscape as it looked before todays intervention. RIGHT: the painting at 3 pm.

9:38 AM: got a great nights sleep & am ready for a productive day in the studio. here is one of the matisse paintings we saw in the permanent collection of the national gallery, washington, d.c.

this painting represents a lifetime of drawing & painting distilled down to the simplest, most elegant combination of forms in space, color and beautiful marks.