motion 18 (on paper) stage 2 / April 10, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

*motion 18* 30x22 1/2" colored pencil & crayon on arches watercolor paper

1:09 PM: today is a gorgeous day. warm. no wind. i'd have to be crazy to not go out & paint plein air. the question is: oil or gouache? leaning towartds oil, which i haven't done for a year at least. lots of prep, but worth it.

i took my motion 18 experiment about as far as i wanted, and will likely leave it as it looks here. i liked this experiment & may follow it with another, slightly less complex, more spare. it's an interesting direction, which will allow me to provide more variety when i finally show the entire series together in a show, probably next year. i would alternate the motion oils on canvas with these crayon & colored pencil drawings on paper. it will give the oils some breathing space, as well as switching up the potential predictability of looking at one oil after another.

start the day with calligraphic warm ups/ determining what's next: an experiment on paper / April 9, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:47 PM: every time i make an under-drawing on canvas for one of my motion series, mikela encourages me to do a few on paper, without painting over them, as unique works unto themselves. today i'm experimenting with that. i'm stopping for the day so we can take a walk up the creek, but i'll continue tomorrow.

my studio at 11 am, with yesterdays *motion 17* on the wall, in the middle just to the left of the 3 plein air oils

11:35 AM: once again i started my day with matcha tea & toast while making some warmup calligraphic marks in a sketchbook. lets see what's in store....i'll post updates as they become available.

start the day right/ yesterdays evening sky/starting to make the motion 17 over-painting / April 8, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:45 PM: the siena was too strong, and the pink triangle in the upper left was distracting & serving no purpose, so i made these adjustments before wrapping up for the day.

i'm anxious to go back out to the creek with oil paints & see what i do. i'm feeling the need for new images to draw from, and i know when i go back out i'll be seeing differently, based upon how this series has evolved over the months.

2:16 PM: i began the painting based upon one of my most loved plein air oils. then i scraped & wiped it out completely, leaving beneath traces of the under-drawing, over which i made this drawing in diluted oils. i may stop here for the day. i like what's happening, how familiar rock forms are distilling down into essence, with their own calligraphic logic, which is more than ever reminiscent of human & animal forms.

*motion 17* as it looked moments ago, at 2pm

after passing over the entire canvas with an off white oil color & scraping off the excess, i'm working into it loosely referring to one of my plein air oils. shortly this image will blur or disappear entirely as i search for solutions... updates will be posted as they become available

11:03 AM: start the day right, with calligraphy exercises made while having my matcha tea & toast!

the under-drawing for *motion 17* yesterday afternoon

8:37 AM: last nights dramatic skies announced some sorely needed precipitation, which fell as rain below 11,000 ft & snow above.

in about an hour i'll walk over to my studio & begin the over-painting on motion 17, which has richest under-painting yet in this series.

BELOW: this mornings west (left) & east skies following last nights precip

under-drawing for motion 17, day 2 / April 7, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of the under-drawing for motion 17

2:54 PM: lots of work on the under-drawing for motion 17 today. perhaps the most i've ever done on one of these under-drawings.mikela keeps saying "make a few on large sheets of paper that you keep like that without painting over them!" i might do that in the near future. it's always somewhat heartbreaking to paint over these beauties. makes you wonder what psychological dynamics might be at work...

and on to motion 17....and an adjustment to my drop down menus / April 6, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

re: SITE CHANGES: over the past few days, i played around with my drop down menus. there were too many of them & it was confusing. so i placed all the pages showing paintings or drawings under works. since greece spans a continuous 15 year period in my life & career as an artist it's a separate header. CV & story are also separate topics & deserve their own headers.so if you're a regular visitor, this will clear up any questions you might have. i'll probably continue to refine & improve this site in the future, & i'll let you know if something changes.

the under-drawing for *motion 17* a the end of my work day

studio interior at 2 pm, an early stage of the *motion 17* under-drawing on the easel . on the wall the just completed motion 16

early stage of the under-drawing: *motion 17*

1:35 PM: for the moment, and until it undergoes the house hanging test, motion 16 is declared complete, resolved, finito. this morning i stretched a new canvas, 38x38" and am currently engaged in making the under-drawing for it.

for those of you who haven't been following my blog, in this motion series, an under-drawing is exactly what it says: a drawing in colored pencil, graphite & crayon which, when it's done, will be sprayed with fixative & partially painted over in oil, so that bits of it peek through the final painting; an underlying energy boost, it is, contributing unplanned & often brilliantly placed accents to the oil painting above. leaving everytrhing to chance is foolish. as is eliminating the possibility for it.

motion 16 : thought it was resolved, but not so fast! / April 5, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:43 PM: i just had the thought that one of the more appealing aspects of working on the motion series the way i have been over the past 4 months is that fortuitous accidents happen with greater and greater frequency, leading me to wonder whether i'm aware in advance they will occur, and only need to shake up my habitual behaviors & expectations to the point where they can spill over and across my consciousness and present themselves on the canvas. in this painting, the most highly treasured such happening is the one you see here. the white upside down triangle with the white line moving down through the gray turns out to be a pivotal axis for the entire composition thus far. slightly out of character with the rest of the marks in the painting, it's like being touched by your lover in a way and in an area never before touched. who knew?

and all this is certainly connected to matt & jason being here the past few days. our conversations over dinner roil up the waters & take mikela & i out of our habitual behaviors & conversations into new territory. it's been coming out in my dreams as well. as we're talking, little flashes of insights & discoveries occur. and the rule of thumb in my work: shake it up, gains in dimension & ends up guiding my movements and decisions moment to moment here in the studio.

1:21 PM: a wandering lady, she is. she desires to pull me towards those new signs matisse speaks so reverently of. there's one particular plein air oil that is especially rich in signs. on that day, november 7, 2014, it seems the rocks spoke to me in a way that enabled me to make one of those rare discoveries.

they are emerging slowly in this re-work of motion 16, filtering into my consciousness. i shouldn't call them re-works, really; they are really more like a part of a process of exploration, you might say. itoday it involved a clean wipe, followed by flipping the canvas upside down, creating a new right side up and a fresh experience of the space.

maybe i need to stop for the day & let it breathe. yes, that's what i'll do.

so here's the evolution of motion 16 thus far, in 3 stages.

12:35 PM: our team is here through tomorrow for actionlab meetings. this is giving me the opportunity to get up & ready early so mikela can start meeting with them by 9. as a result, i had time to make some adjustments to the motion page as well as my fluid landscape page, while casting glances at motion 16. the answer came up: nope! nice try tarlow, but this puppy needs work. so i did a clean wipe, resulting in the canvas looking like it does below on the right. the previous version is on the left. the post clean-wipe look is bare bones, you might say, oddly reminiscent of certain 10th c. chinese calligraphers. and evocative of moby dick's vast white form.

lets see where it wants to go next...

my studio at 10 am this morning, with the new *motion 16* on the wall

10:28 am: upon entering the studio, which is a bit of a mess, my fist take on the new motion 16 was that it looks resolved. i may do a few more things.....we'll see as the morning progresses.

as i drank my matcha tea, i was reading a chapter on zaho mengjian in how to read chinese paintings. he specialized in painting the narcissus, known in chinese as shuixian, or the water goddess. imagine spending your entire life as an artist drawing & painting one flower which, in the opinion of scholars, he was able to raise to the level of the orchid.his portrayal of their twisting, turning leaves is especially effective at evoking movement, which of course is of great interest to me right now in my motion series.

the drawing for motion 16 / April 4, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

**STAGE 2** of *motion 16* 36x36" oil, colored pencil & oil pastel on linen

5:07 PM: .....and, in a last minute scramch, he dives back in, scrapes & scrumbles, draws with graphite & moves once again into motion territory, elbowing his opponents to the side in full body swinging of arms & flinging of paint....

**STAGE 1** of *motion 16* 36x36" oil, colored pencil & oil pastel on linen

as i predicted, this painting, thus far, differs form all the rest. rather than being inspired by one of my older plein air paintings, it is largely drawn from one of the photographs of the creek i shot one day while out painting. it lacks the larger, rock inspired forms of the rest of the series & is mor eof a riff on a particular place at a particular time. some palette knife scraping has taken place, to make the strokes that were too defined blur & widen their edges. i can't wait to see where it takes me tomorrow.

2:05 PM: this morning i stretched a new 36x36" canvas and commenced the drawing for motion 16. i used a new fixative to stabilize the drawing, which is non-toxic. this is a huge relief, because the stuff i used to use was terrible, and i could smell the toxic fumes even when i was wearing my professional mask.

i'm about to start painting, and am approaching this one a bit differently than the previous motion paintings. you'll see what i mean once i start posting images.

i also spent time revising my home page, as well as my new fluid landscape page. have a look:

fluid landscape

more work on my new fluid landscape page and a small but important tweak to "motion 14" / April 2, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

6:19 PM: i started my morning by making a relatively small but all important tweak to motion 14. here'a comparative view before & after the tweak. take a look at the far left area of the composition. in the before, there's a space. in the tweaked version on the right, a few faint marks allow the composition to look & feel more complete.

fluid landscape

then i continued work on my new fluid landscape page, which is filling out nicely. have a look:

back to work on motion 10 following a 1 day break / April 1, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:50 PM: yesterday we had a political meeting in alamosa frist thing in the morning, followed by some clean up & prep work for our dinner guests, one of whom brought us 2 amazing bottles of home made wine, the other 2 large bottles of my favorite beer from the recently opened soul craft brewery in salida.

i did quite a bit on motion 10 this morning. it was clearly not resolved. some cool things happened, but it needs to sit for 24 hours.

the inverted reddish V shape pn the left was the first to go; a rather awkward shape asking to leave. what i call "kneeling elephant, on the mid right, also left the picture. the blue on top was interrupted by an area of while with the red outline of a couple of rocks, borrowed form one of the more successful plein air oils painted in 2104.

BELOW: left-motion 10 as it looked before todays intervention. right- motion 10 moments ago-

ongoing work on motion 10 and fluid landscape page / March 30, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

crestone/baca skies photographed yesterday afternoon

2:14 PM: i lightened the left & upper right background areas. there's definitely more motion happening in the composition than before my intervention today. if you compare it with yesterdays version, which you can see below in my 12:22 post, although there's more going on, it hangs together way better. the bright whites that used to be in the lower portion have given way to a an ochre yellow/grey, allowing the white i strategically placed above the large brown rock on the right to become an accent & pop. i think the addition of siena to the right of that white also helps enrich & balance the composition. the pinkish brown shape just to the left of that new white rock shape was annoying me in yesterdays version; it kept drawing my eye to it. so i think that issue has been resolved.the addition of some orange/yellow splashes of creek water on the lower right add a lot as well, echoing similar colors in the central portion, just beneath that green rectangular shape, which is also new, and plays a critical role.

BELOW: left-yesterdays version, right-motion 10 as it looked moments ago

1:42 pm: this is where motion 10 is currently at. more work after i have a bite.

12:22 PM; i think i'm going to do some more work on motion 10 & 14 this afternoon; they both could use some work. BELOW: motion 10 (left) & motion 14 before today's interventions.

9:45 AM: this morning i did more work on my new fluid landscape page:

http://philiptarlow.com/fluid-landscape/

i'm about to meditate & head to the studio. i'll post more as i get into work on the motion series paintings.