flu day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

4:10 PM: it ain't fun, friends. a nasty nasty flu. i need a permanant cup hanging beneath my nose.

i created a new page with mostly plein air landscapes, all of which have some form of horizon, which was the request of the denver gallery. a few are more realist than some of the others, and i plan on reviewing them all with the gallery to choose the ones they find the most compelling, in terms of what they've been looking for in abstracted landscapes. here's the link, and below are a few selections form the 24 paintings on the page.

flu /  by Philip Tarlow

7:58 PM: woke up with the flu, with all its nasty symptoms. so i didn't go to the studio & just mainly rested, except for an hour of political calls i just made asking for support for our favorite democratic candidte, who is running to unseat tipton.

in reviewing the 20x20" landscape studies i made over the past week, i was less than excited. maybe it just doesn't work trying to meet someone elses expectations. i kind of know now, after 2 tries, what the denver gallery i'm so interested in is looking for, but it runs counter to my preferred way of working without a specific end in mind. when i'm feeling better, i'll make one more attempt at a plein air oil, and if that doesn't work, it may not have been meant to be.

i did find a plein air gouache done last year that i think comes close to their vision, and this is it.

                  3/25/17 plein air gouache

i'll get them on the phone & see what they think. if it's a good fit, i can make paintings that are compositionally in alignment with this gouache, with it's defined spaces, clear foreground & background. it's one of my better plein air gouaches, i'd say.

motion 28, 20x20" /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of motion 28

3:40 PM: motion 28 at the end of my painting day. 

at work on motion 28, 20x20"

2:45 PM: today i started another 20x20" oil painting which, along with motion 26 & 27 is an experiment for a larger version destined for a denver gallery. the challenge is to have it be loose & painterly but not so abstracted that the viewer has no sense of where they are located in space.

in other words, there needs to be a discernible foreground, middle ground & background , but without falling into the realm of a traditional landscape. more white space, less descriptiveness.

...and now that you mention it,,,, /  by Philip Tarlow

2:19 PM: today i entered my studio with verve and impeccable non-attachment. like a butterfly on holiday. i made another studio creek-scape on 20x20" portrait linen. shades of milton avery announced themselves. but with a 2018 awareness of the fast approaching end of all things familiar, whatsoever.

flim flam music entertained the space and memories of a naked boy immersing himself in 40 degree stream water. tremulous was the hand, but sure and steady, incomprehensibly certain through and above time. 

on saturday i got a box of pullet eggs from judy at the kiosk. they are, she said, smaller but with larger yolks. good, she added, for baking.

well, as long as..... /  by Philip Tarlow

1pm: stage 2 of 5/28/18 studio creek-scape in oil, 20x20"

11:58 AM: a windy, partly cloudy day in crestone/baca. this morning, after yesterdays plein air struggle, i thought to myself:

"well, as long as i'm a good painter, WTF, why not just paint a creek-scape here in my studio based on one of the many hundreds of photographs i've taken of our creek? why not?"

so that's what i'm doing right now, on a 20x20" canvas, and here's phase 1:

going out on a limb /  by Philip Tarlow

                                                                       5/27/18 plein air oil  20x20"  oil on canvas

2:59 PM: so here's what i did today. it was an experiment to see if i could get the same level of sensitivity & painterliness with this less expensive cotton canvas as i can with the very expensive portrait linen. i can't. but there's a different, possibly equally compelling quality. makes me understand better some of courbet's landscapes. i worked in a way that's unfamiliar to me in my plein air paintings. generally in making plein air paintings i'm in a very meditative space, in touch with my chinese 10th century calligraphic mark making self. today was more active. vital shifts and sudden changes of pace occurred as i worked, painting out some passages, trying solutions until the very last minute, in a way that usually happens only in a studio painting.

i'm still taking prescription codeine for the post op pain, so that may have made my anger more extreme, but almost as soon as i sat down to paint, after squeezing my colors, a couple with a dog appeared, on a sunday walk to the stupa. the dog made a bee line for me, jumped all over me and nearly knocked over the easel, with my palette & the fresh canvas. i patiently explained that painting for me is a meditation, and could they please put a leash on their dog. twenty minutes later they reappeared & the dog once again jumped all over me, totally interrupting my work. i kind of exploded and yelled "get this dog off me!!" not the best environment for painting. it's much more private, especially on a sunday, up at north crestone creek, which is where i'll be going from now on

as for the painting. aside form the fact that it was somewhat of a struggle working on an unresponsive canvas, my attempt to transmit more of a sense of space & depth was only successful in a limited way. i have to sit with it for 24 hours & chill in order to make a full evaluation. but what i do see is that i can accomplish my goal, which you can read about below in my 10:13 AM post. the only real impediment, once i eliminate the dog & hiker interruptions & start going to the more remote north crestone creek location, are the bugs, which have begun appearing in the form of flies. mosquitoes usually don't start up till mid-june, and likely won't be too bad this year since, due to the drought,  there's very little standing water for them to breed.

that said, i actually way prefer the 20x20" canvas to the 16x16" i've been using for my plein air oils for years. it feels more like an actual painting, less like an oil sketch.

10:13 AM: this morning i awoke with continued swelling & pain from the 2 molar extractions i underwent this past thursday, but feeling enough energy to contemplate going out to the creek with one of my newly stretched 20x20" canvases. i say going out on a limb in part because it's a cute pun and in part because i've never before gone to such lengths to meet the vision of a gallery owner/director.

of course all that i do when painting is ultimately for me;  towards the unfolding of my vision as an artist. but this time it's a little different. i'm intent on becoming a member of a denver gallery that i like a lot and am willing to go the extra mile to be in alignment with the rather specific vision of the owner/director and begin producing a particular kind of landscape she knows will fill a gap in what her stable of artists can offer.

i see it as a rather interesting challenge.

when i showed her abstracted landscapes such as the ones you see here in my studio, they were almost what she had in mind, but not quite; a bit too abstracted, not allowing the viewer to place him/herself spatially. not enough foreground/middle ground/background.

normally, when i sally forth into the creek-scape, i have a blank mind. it's like a zen meditation. it's unusual for me to have something so specific in mind. but because it's a shift, i like it. i like the challenge. as usual, i don't feel attached to the results, yet in a way i do.

i found these 2 plein air gouaches on paper, painted at the creek last year, which are also in the photo of the studio wall, above. perhaps they come closest to what she described because, more so than most of the others, they do offer the viewer a place in space; a sense of where they are in relation to the landscape.

that doesn't mean what i do today will look anything like these 2 small gouaches. i have no idea what will come out of todays session. rather than going to north crestone creek, as i have been most recently, i think i'll go instead to a location at the base of the trail up to tashi gomang stupa. they're re-paving the road up to north crestone trail, so i'll wait till they're done sometime this week. i've stretched 6 20x20" canvasses, which will be enough to choose the right ones to make larger; probably 36x38." on our next denver trip, i'll bring those along to show the gallery.

recent motion paintings on studio wall /  by Philip Tarlow

2:30 PM: i'm evaluating the 3 recent motion series paintings, which you see here on my studio wall, along with a few of the 2014 plein air oils which served as inspiration. 

i'm pondering where to go from here, and considering making a new plein air series in oil, to see how my perception has shifted since i began making the 3 latest motion paintings, and if perhaps making them on a larger scape might affect how i paint the smaller ones with the new expectation that all the marks i'm making may end up on a canvas twice the size or more. 

if i do go ahead and start a new lein air series, it will be on slightly larger canvases: 20x20" rather than 16x16". the north crestone trail gate will open back up by memorial day, allowing me access once again to all of the 12 campsites, instead of being limited to the few i can access that are close to where i currently have to park the car.

yesterday while browsing my book how to read chinese paintings, published by the metropolitan museum, i ran across the following description by author maxwell hearn, of one of wu zhen's 10th c. handscrolls: " balanced between representation & calligraphic abstraction."

it seems to be an absolutely perfect way of talking about my motion series, so i borrowed it, and you will now find it as a subtitle on my motion page. click on the image belowto visit the page.

motion 25 is born /  by Philip Tarlow

3:27 PM: based upon this 6/9/14  16x16" plein air oil, motion 25, like motion 23 & 24, is balanced between representation & calligraphic abstraction. rather than utilizing an under-drawing, as i did in all motion series paintings 1 through 22, i am recreating the smaller plein air painting on a larger scale. all the spontaneous marks made in the original plein air paintings are translated into studio-speak, moving more towards signs and symbols for rocks & water. on the right is the original 16x16" plein air painting.

second day of work on motion 24 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:34 PM: today started out as a sunny morning, but it rapidly evolved into a cloudy, stormy day. winds were blowing at gale force for an hour or so, as thunderstorms moved up from the southwest. so  far we've only had a small amount of rain, but more is in the forecast for later this afternoon.

despite the failing light, i was able to get some good work done on motion 24. i stayed mostly true to the 6/9/14 plein air oil, which is 16x16." of course i made adjustments dictated mostly by the larger dimensions. a 16x16" painting doesn't translate to a larger scale without some important changes. also, the brisk, spontaneous movement of the brush on the smaller scale and the the immediacy of the moment out there at the creek are tricky to translate into a studio setting. i also noticed that the canvas i used for the original, while it was portrait linen, was a different brand, and the white of the canvas is slightly greyed. the portrait linen i'm using for the larger version is made by artfix, and is significantly whiter & brighter. this makes the transitions from the delicate tones in much of the painting to the white of the canvas more stark & puts more emphasis on the negative spaces, of which there are many. 

you can see this in the photos below,  where the original plein air oil is on the left & the new large painting on the right.

starting work on motion 24 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:19 PM:here's where i'm stopping for the day, as the wind picks up, the skies darken and it sure looks like we might get a thunderstorm, as predicted. although motion 24 is not yet complete, she's already singing.

i'll clean my brushes, make my political calls & head back to the house, where mikela is suffering with an intense flu. she's definitely going to get the flu shot next year. my doc recommended it & i'm very glad i lestened to him.

1:31 PM: i began work on motion 24 this morning, it's based upon this 6/9/14 plein air oil, which is 16x16" motion 24 is 48x48" and, unlike motion 23 is being painted on artfix fine portrait linen, which is very expensive & has 4 coats of primer. the difference from the previous painting, which was on cotton canvas, is vast. vast, i say! the sensitivity with which it takes my brush strokes is stunning. it's like the painting is painting itself.

i'll continue working till 3:30, when i'll make about an hour of calls to supporters of diane bush, asking them if they're up for making calls or doing door knocking in support of her candidacy. she's running for congress in our district & is, in our opinion by far the best candidate.