starting prep work on motion 14 / March 11, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

starting the under-drawing for motion 14

4:06 PM: i stretched a new 36x36" canvas (portrait linen), keyed it out to smooth out a few wrinkles, which i hate, & started the colored pencil drawing, which i'll be working on for at least a few more days before i start painting in oil. the image i'm using for the under-drawing is a close up shot of rocks & water from one of our walks this past fall.

12:54 PM: upon entering the studio & giving motion 12 & 13 the usual first glance, they appeared resolved. so the next step is to bring them over to the house this afternoon & see how they hold up on the walls there.

BELOW: are some iphone pics i shot this morning, and i'll post pics of my prep work stretching the canvas & starting the drawing for motion 14, which looks like it too will be 36x36."

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hello again / March 10, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:15 PM: following 3 very productive and gratifying days of intensive meetings with our actionlab team, i'm back, albeit briefly, in the studio. i'm a bit wacked out still, but i was able to make a small but important, i think, alteration to motion 13. the green bit at the very top kept grabbing my eye, so i did away with it, to the benefit of the entire composition. in addition, you will notice a white line tracing the top of the grey/brown triangle at the top, and a broken white line beneath at the bottom of the grey of the rectangular box-like rock at the bottom left.

one of the rewards of not being able to look at a new painting for a period of days is fresh vision. see what you think of the before (left) and after, BELOW:

motion 13 becomes more complex / March 6, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:16 PM: today i made significant changes to motion 13. i kept finding my solutions too pat & predictable, so while the painting didn't by any means look bad, i simply wasn't satisfied with it. so i worked on it, stopped & photographed it thinking it was resolved, then found myself diving back in. this happened 3, maybe 4 times. oil pastel played a role, which is where those blue-greens come from. and when i couldn't find any more jumpung off points in the oil pastel i was using as my inspiration, i didn't hesitate to let my eye rove to another painting for ideas & inspiration.

we have our team actionlab members coming down form boulder tomorrow for 3 days of meetings, so it's likely i won't get back to work in the studio till saturday. in the mean time, this painting will sit & decide for itself whether it's resolved.

BELOW: the painting at 1 pm and 3:30pm.

continuing motion 13 / March 5, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

11/7/14 plein air oil, the current inspiration for *motion 13*

3:49 PM: the source image has once again shifted, so i did quite a bit of work on motion 13 today! it looks close to being resolved, but it's always hard to tell at the end of the day, when i'm tired. this is a good example of how the painting has, one could say, a mind of it's own. if you as an artist are commited to not knowing, to the never ending process of discovery and to avoiding repetitve , easy solutions, then you just follow your intuition and listen to where your body wants to go. it's very physical. you must be willing entertain the possibility that it might fail.

what i'm slowly discovering is that there a limited, very limited number of plein air gouaches & oils that can get me turned on enough to carry me through the entire process, as tsarouchis told me years ago.

here's how it looks tight now:

noon: upon entering my studio, my first glance, as always very important, gave me the queues as to where i needed to go next with motion 13. i'm in the thick of it & just stopped long enough to compose & post this. more later...

yesterday today at noon

wiping out the motion 13 over-painting & starting over / March 4, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:49 PM: here's the current state of motion 13. i'm in no rush to move ahead with it, enjoying every moment of the additions i'm making on top of this precious, soft under-drawing.

the studio today has a new, fresh energy following my time with my mentee (don't want to reveal his name for reasons of privacy). here's one of the drawings i made of him during our session. i don't have a photo of his, but they (there were 3) were quite beautiful, especially the final one.

12:39 PM: while the motion 13 over-painting was kind of interesting, it just wasn't doing it for me. so yesterday i wiped it out. since the paint was still wet, i was able to get practically the whole thing, leaving a thin, interesting filmy haze over the whole thing.

i'll post more pics as i work back over it, using a different plein air gouache as my inspiration. oh, and don't forget to let me tell you about my most excellent experience mentoring my new 12 year old friend yesterday. we each made 3 drawings of each other, and plan to get back together in 2 weeks, when we'll go out to the creek to paint plein air. i think he's very talented and am excited to be able to give him guidance. i think we're both learning from one another.

starting the over-painting in oil / March 2, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:32 PM: the perilous vibrancy of the trembling unknown: this is how i might describe what is happening with motion 13. if you click on the image and make it full screen, you will see the "content" in the way deKooning described it: "a glimpse of something, an encounter....like a flash."

12:38 PM: i began working over the under-drawing this morning, scraping just enough of the oil paint i'm using away so as to allow fugitive areas of the drawing to appear here and there. i just saw something i want to work more on, so i'll stop this post here & continue later.

stage 2: motion 13 under-drawing / March 1, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:19 PM: today i took the under-drawing for motion 13 further, using colored pencils and mostly crayon, with a little oil pastel as well. this drawing can barely restrain itself from dancing right off the canvas. it's a great example of how sometimes departing from naturalistic colors can actually enhanse the sensation of the actual landscape as it appeared that day last november. as with all the previous under-drawings, it's difficult to bring myself to paint over it, obscuring most of the passages partially or totally. i'm in no rush however, and we'll see how i feel in the morning.

motion 13 kicks off / February 28, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:16 PM: i feel motion 12 is resolved after yesterday's interventions, so i stretched another 36x36" canvas and began the under-drawing for motion 13.

it's based upon this photo i shot on 11/25/17 while walking up north crestone creek with mikela. the light was especially magical that afternoon; the rock in the center was virtually exploding with light. the under-drawing will continue tomorrow, when i'll very likely complete it & prepare to begin the over-paiinting the following. productive entity, i am.

stage 1 of the under-drawing for *motion 13* as it looked at the end of my work day

a dekooning quote influences the trajectory of motion 12 / February 27, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

BELOW: motion 12 this morning and, after an intervention, at noon today.

12:34 PM: this morning over coffee, i was again looking through the MOMA 2005 de Kooning retrospective catalogue, when i came across this 1949 quote, which is characteristic of de Kooning's thought process. this , plus a comment yesterday my mikela regarding her dislike for the purplish hue she detected in motion 12, resulted in some changes to the painting this morning.

here are 4 photos from that catalogue:

subtle, unexpected changes to motion 12 / February 26, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:19 PM: this morning mikela ambled over to check out motion 12. she liked it a lot, but had some issues with the violet tint, as opposed to my usual earth tones. but as she gazed, i saw a few things i wanted to change. most of all, how dark the marks indicating the outlines of rocks at the top of the composition were.

as well, she lightly suggested making a few studies in gouache from some of the 10th c. masters i so admire. doing that led me to make a few very subtle marks to the 2 branches on the lower portion of the composition, which you might find it hard to discern in the digital image, but in person they are evident.BELOW: yesterdays version on the left. and here's how it looked following my changes.

BELOW: 2 studies i made this morning, in ink on paper. on the left, a study of a landscape painting by 10th c. chinese artist gong xian and on the right, a quick study looking out my north studio window.