April 26, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

1:54 PM: i did a bit more on motion 20, and am stopping for the day, as there aer a few things i need to take care of this afternoon.

12:52 PM: today, with yesterdays white-over dried, i flipped the painting upside down & am going into it with wax pastel crayons & oil sticks. it has the air of a bonnard interior; soft colors, lots of patterning & a level of intimacy one might not expect in a landscape painting.

i'm continuing work, and will post updated pics a bit later in the afternoon.

in his guardian article yesterday, renowned 86 year old social scientist mayer hillman basically says that we're doomed. nothing we can do now or in the future can save us from the impending end of all life on earth.

the rocks, to which i am increasingly drawn in my work, will remain silent martyrs, as they have done for millions of years. or maybe not so silent.

returning to motion 20: a whiteover / April 25, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:44 PM: i'm leaving the under-drawing for motion 21 as is for the time being & returning to motion 20, which will undergo a rad-rework. after looking at it in the house for a few days, it just wasn't working for either of us.

i started out by going over the surface with a thin layer of white oil paint, which was then scraped off, leaving a semi-transparent film over the entire painting. tomorrow i'll paint into it.

remembering angelos delivorrias / starting motion 21 / April 24, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

2:37 PM: the skies have grown dark & it's snowing on the peaks. hoping we'll get some precip., whether rain or snow. this winter is officially the least amount of snow on record we've ever received, and we're in severe drought.

i'm stopping early so that i can begin photographing & returning ceramic pieces made by a friend in houston. i've painted on some, but most have remained unpainted.

11:09 AM: i learned this morning from my son dimitri that my dear old friend angelos delivorrias, former director of the benaki museum, passionate lover of ancient & byzantine greek art, passed away today. here you see us at my 2006 solo exhibition at skoufa gallery in athens.

a sweet, sweet being he was. extremely generous. deeply knowledgeable about the history & philosophy of greek art.... when he spoke about a piece of ancient sculpture, i can remember him running his long, artistic fingers over the piece as though he were stroking a lover. as beautifully as he articulated his description of the piece, you always felt there were simply no words to express what he was feeling & knowing in that moment. his passion was expressed in his eyes, his lips. i always felt his hellenic soul, reflected in his characteristically full mediterranean lips. the enthusiasm angelos expressed harkens back to the greek origins of the word: en-theos, or literally, possessed by a god.

a very strong presence, i can still see & hear him as if he were in front of me right now. you will be missed, my friend, but never forgotten.

12:46 PM:

i started work on the under-drawing for motion 21. i needed to give it a rest with motion 20, so i'll come back to it in a few days, while i progress work on motion 21.

7:33 am: i brought motion 20 to the house yesterday & hung it on the east wall. better, but not perfect. i'm going to leave it hanging for at least a few days while i start motion 21, then i might make a few tweaks.

motion 20 wanted more work / April 23, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

ABOVE: motion 20 yesterday (left) and moments ago

12:34 PM: when i entered the studio this morning, the message form motion 20 was loud & clear: you need to spend more time with me. look at matisse, and he'll show you the way.

so i opened one of my matisse books as i drank my matcha tea and with toast. sure enough, the discoveries matisse made during the 1905-6 period & the breakthroughs he made emboldened me to use color differently than i had been in this painting. what has resulted is a far more compelling painting, i believe.

you'll notice, in comparing todays version with yesyterdays, above, that i added i added green on the upper right, as well as the naples yellow rock in the upper center & more richness to the reflections in the water below the rock in the center. as well, the blue on the lower left needed to be broken up, some white splashes of creek water have appeared, as well as the little white bubbles. the tree trunk on the upper left now has some patterning.

there is some bold mark making, to which i added some accents.

returning to motion 20 / the sangres yesterday / April 22, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

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

1:31PM: yesterday, as promised, i took motion 20 back to our house & hung it on the east wall, where it can be viewed clearly up to 60 feet away. it did NOT pass the test, which was obvious to both of us right away.

the problem was, i was trying to hard to do something that would be in harmony with the aesthetic of the gallery i'm in conversation with in denver, which i'm very interested in.

so today i brought it back to the studio & dove in with a fresh energy, and with the attitude that my job is to make an excellent painting & forget as much as possible why i happen to be making this one. there are time constraints as well, since our next trip to denver and to the gallery will take place in just a few weeks.

i worked, as usual, as long as my energy lasted, and i was in that space where the hand & body move where they need to & the mind follows. if you examine the comparative shots from yesterday, i think you'll agree the composition is stronger, more coherent, with a far better flow from the top to the bottom of the canvas, and just the right number of tonal & coloristic accents to make it pop.

author tony schwartz, co-author of trump's art of the deal, says we need to ask:

what am i not seeing? and

what else might be true?

we saw him in an interview yesterday & were taken by his unexpected acuity & wisdom.

i'm going to give these questions some thought & perhaps return later with a few answers.

BELOW: details of motion 20 as it looked moments ago

BELOW: the sangres yesterday as seen from our house

mentee day: collage / tweaks to motion 20 / April 21, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

BELOW: today was the day my mentee comes over to the studio. we focused on collage, which k. had never done before. his is on the right. i think it's stunning; what about you?

5:32 PM: the east wall of our house always tells the story, and in this case the story is that motion 20 needs more work. i have some ideas about what it needs, so tune in tomorrow morning for the next stage.

12:25 PM: after a brief studio visit by mikela, i made some minor but all important changes to motion 20. i say all important because, as you can discern form the comparative shots from yesterdays version, the entire composition snapped into focus by what i did. firstly, you will notice that the black & white upper portion of the painting now unites with the lower portion by the simple extension of the b&w tree trunk lines on the far right from the upper extending now into the lower, colored area. next, the white border i had created yesterday running down both sides of the painting has been interrupted in some spots, allowing the pastel colors to extend in those areas to the edge of the composition.

the net result, i believe is one of unity, so that motion 20 now passes the glance test: quite simply, does it hang together & read as one coherent whole when you cast a momentary glance at it? the next test is the east wall of our house, where it will be hung, albeit still wet in spots, this afternoon. we can get back as far as 60 feet, or the full length of the upper floor of our open plan house (designed by mikela). if it reads well & carries form thjat distance, & looks just as good the morning after, we're good. and the next and final tests are: how does it look in the gallery, where we'll bring it in a few weeks, and one hopes, how does it look on the wall of the client who will purchase the painting?

BELOW: motion 20 yesterday (left) and today.

a stupa visit with a dear friend / back to the easel / April 20, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:33 PM: i'm not fully recovered from my colonoscopy. our old friend kat arrived yesterday afternoon & we had an excellent time catching up & introducing her to some of the wonders of crestone/baca this morning in the snow. we drove up to the tashi gomang stupa, which was bathed in a magnificent light created in part by our spring snowstorm today.

i made some good progress on motion 20, which you see here as it looked moments ago.

the bit on top, where there is a drawing on an off white ground, happened at the very last moment, and releived some of the congestion taking place in the composition, as did the off white stripes running down both sides.

there is a playful, even cartoon-like element in this painting, in the good sense. the way the bottom 3/4, with it's earth tones & light pastel pinks & blues plays off the grey-black & white of the drawing in the upper segment seems somehow very now. not in the trendy sense; rather as a reflection of the current visual meme. informed, well drawn eye candy tending towards a painterly-romantic vision of the natural world.

a day off / April 19, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

11:09 AM: been on liquid diet for 24 hours & as of 6 am, NADA! it will all be over in 3 or 4 hours, when i can eat & drink again.

i'm in the studio gazing at motion 20, which i can't wait to get back to tomorrow.

this is me working on it yesterday...

more work on motion 20 today / April 18, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:30 PM: as often happens, i had to tweak the painting before going out the door. i pushed back the violet on the left & the rose on the mid-right.

that helped, and much more work is needed. i have to be in the right space, so i may have to wait a day after the colonoscopy. right now i'm drinking insane amounts of gatorade spiked with a laxative, as per my doc's personal creation, which he claims is far easier to handle than the traditional ingredients docs use.

it's challenging working on a larger scale after painting the entire series thus far on smaller, square or almost square canvasses.

2:24 PM: stopping a bit early today as the laxatives kick in & the gurgling begins. i'm actually amazed i was able to do much as i did. it's by no means close to resolution, but getting there.

i think that violet on the left has to go or at least be pushed back. the entire upper 1/3 hasn't decided what it needs to be...on the whole it hasn't yet sung it's song. maybe i need to get this colonoscopy behind me (pun?) before it can find its way.

12:45 PM: i got an early start today. went over the painting with a very light wash of oil color & am now working into it with colored pencils & crayons. it already has a very different feel than yesterdays version.

diving back in; more soon. i don't have to interrupt for food breaks today, as i'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow & just drinking liquids & laxatives, which thus far haven't kicked in so i'm not yet running to the bathroom....veggie bouillon is a very good solution for keeping hunger pangs at bay.

continuing work on motion 20, 54x35" on a crazy windy day / April 17, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

motion 20 at 3:15 PM

working in only colored pencil, crayon & oil pastel on a canvas this size is a new experience. the sweeping, broad marks done with the edge of a stick of oil pastel are a device i found for dealing with this in a way that begins to create some transitions that help avoid the sort of jammed composition of the ones i did on paper, especially motion 18.

the impression one has right now is of a relatively pale image. which doesn't read as well as i'd like from a distance. the solution may be to add some light washes of oil color as accents. too early to tell.

tomorrow i'll be on liquids & laxatives prior to my colonoscopy on thursday, so it's hard to know how much i'll be able to get done while running to the bathroom every so often. we'll see in the morning!

motion 20 at 1pm. it's progressing slowly, in part to preserve the white space.

9:49 AM: about to meditate & head over to my studio on an extreme high wind day, so far gusting to 45mph where we live in the baca. the blowing dut has almost comeletely obscured the sangres. a comparative view of yesterday morning & today is below: