continuing work on motion 28 /  by Philip Tarlow

2pm:  refreshed & rejuvenated after our highly productive actionlab team meetings sunday & monday, i resumed work on motion 28. the rocks in the forground were bothering me, so most of the work i did has consisted, thus far, of working into those rocks, scrubbing the canvas down to it's white surface, going back in....like that. 

i can't plan for what it is i'm after, but i know it when i see it. usually, the richest passages come about while trying to resolve some other problem in the composition. often, the painting starts to sing following the introduction of a particular form or color that serves as an accent...maybe the equivalent in music would be a staccato, unexpected high note, allowing the rest of the piece to flow like water. to move. thus the title of this series: movement.

as a result, i want to be able to discover the painting anew every time i look at it.

 

drawings made on our recent 2 week trip to france & switzerland /  by Philip Tarlow

8:13 PM: during our 2 week trip to paris, evion and switzerland  last week, i made a number of colored pencil drawings here are some of them.

more work on motion 28 and renewed efoorts on motion 27-a /  by Philip Tarlow

7:41 PM: today as i contemplated next moves on motion 28, i turned motion 27-a, which had been facing the wall, around &, feeling, that freedom which comes from a WTF attitude, launched into it with a large round brush. which in turn spilled over into my freedom to work on motion 28. 

BELOW: left-motion 28  right-motion 27-a

starting work on the drawing: motion 28 /  by Philip Tarlow

                                                                                           motion 28 at 4 pm

4 pm: motion 28 at the end of my painting day. feedback to myself: has interesting passages, but doesn't yet hang together.

1:10 PM: i stretched a new 36x38" canvas this morning & started work on the new motion 28. it's in that early stage i love so much, with lots of white space. i'm working in colored pencil & crayon, and have introduced oil paint at an earlier stage than usual.

i'll post more pics as work progresses.

re-evaluating /  by Philip Tarlow

2:19 PM: light rain is falling.better than no rain at all. leadbelly is singing you can't lose me cholly. i did a big scrape n' rub this morning, delighting in the physicality of it all, and energized by the prospect of thunderstorms.

i got down to the bits that wouldn't go away, leaving a scantily clad canvas which, if it could have, would have jumped up, wrapped itself in a towel and exited the studio, still wet hair loose about her shoulders.

it all took place on my work table, where various palette knives, old washcloths & big trowels moved vigorously across the linen, catching recently applied globs of titanium white oil paint & straeking them across the surface like a crazi skate boarder high on drugs.

they hang next to one another now in the dim, overcast-sky light. released from their darker, more pronounced marks and relieved to be free. at least for now, from my sweeping scrapes & scrubs, they are settling in to their new, subtle reality.

6:55 AM: motion 27-a will be returning to my studio later this morning. i'll see what i'm going to do, but i feel somewhat at a loss as to where to go from here. i might actually unstretch it & start over....again. returning from this 2 week trip to europe is not easy. sleep wise, i feel back to normal today, and it's been a full week since we got back. maybe nexttime we travel overseas i need to allow a week before jumping back into painting, and instead spend my time doing organizing stuff i put off when i'm in my flow with work. 

motion 27 revived, or, pt expressionist meets pt intimist, or...out of control /  by Philip Tarlow

4:18 PM: well, it didn't take long to bring motion 27-a back to the house, hang it & rapidly determine that it doesn't work. so, despite my seemingly convincing statement earlier this morning, i probbaly should not have messed with it. so tomorrow i'll bring it back to the studio & see what i can do to revive it and, ideally transform it into a better painting than it was when i started work this morning. as a reminder, here's what it looked like this morning. if you compare the 2 images below, showing yesterdays & todays versions, yesterdays version is a much more coherent, not to mention sensitive. but i don't regret what i did today. part of the learning curve.

i do feel that i can pull it off, especially since tomorrow if forecast to be about 10F cooler. harder to work in the heat, even with my swamp cooler.

3:15 PM: i worked on both motion 27 & 27-a in tandem today. not yet clear on the results, and it was a little painful to let go of yesterdays sensitive, bonnard-like version of motion 27-a, but i just had to do it.

BELOW is motion 27-a at the end of my painting day, and below that, motion 27.

                                                                                 motion 27-a at 3pm today

                                                                                   motion 27 at 3pm today

 
 

10:45 AM: yesterdays adventure felt a tad precious, after the fact. oh, the little cross hatching; the gradual build of delicate marks....no boldness.

                              DETAIL

so this morning i literally grabbed the failed, or so i thought motion 27 and dove into it, placing it flat on my work table & applying scoops of titanium zinc white with palette knives. my expressionist self came to life as i swirled the paint into shapes mimicking the roiling creek water, then scraped, then made bold tree branch marks with brushes, again scraping while delighting in my WTF attitude.

too much control is as deadly as too out of control. where the two meet, new shades of beauty may emerge, sometimes giving the controlling mind food for new ways of controlling the process! a process that won't be controlled because by it's nature, it is out of control.

what needs, however, to be understood by the uninitiated is that, underlying all this is the drawing. the value, the weight of ones marks all go back to the drawing, the draftsmanship. most kids have it. then they lose or forget it. then if they're lucky, the return to it, informed and enriched by the awareness and knowledge of the history of art.

day 2-motion 27-a /  by Philip Tarlow

motion 27-a  36x38", at the end of my painting day today

                                            DETAIL

3:38 PM: it's been a long day. today is our 4th day home following our long return flight from france, via detroit. (cheaper tickets). i added a rock form a different image to break up the flatness of the green area in the center of the composition. you can see it in the image blow right. that didn't work. spent a lot of time & elbow grease removing it & playing around with other solutions, and ended up here. i'm way too bleary eyed to evaluate the painting right now. so it will be a july 4th event.

9:37 AM: so what's with the 27-a? that's to distinguish it from motion 27, which was discarded a few days ago; a rare event in this motion series.

on the left, ABOVE: the painting on day 1, yesterday. and on the right, how it looked as i began work this morning, half an hour ago. a new imagery has been introduced, with the rock shape in the left foreground breaking up the annoyingly straight line of the green & the shadows of 2 trees on the upper right adding, i think successfully, to the composition.

motion 27-a is beginning to reveal it's identity, as much to me as to you. i can't help but think of the stones 40 licks imagery when i gaze at the passage on the mid-left. a sub-conscious sexual reference?

motion 27-a /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL: motion 27-a at 2:30.

2:19 PM: this is it for today. the trick tomorrow will be to keep it fresh, with lots of space, but with a compelling point of focus. this cannot be planned, but is most likely to occur early in the day, when my energy is fresh & the temperatures low. most important, i always need to remember to listen to the painting itself; what it wants, when it's feeling resolved.

motion 27-a  36X38", at 12;30 PM

12:30 PM: here's the current state of motion 27-a. clearly, it's a work in progress. it's starting to get hot,so i'll see how much more i can do before i stop; probably and hour more.

 

DETAILS: left & below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:12 AM: early stage of motion 27-a. it's like an animal of some sort growing appendages, organs, scales...

 

 

 

 

 

9:11 AM: it's still relatively cool; current outside temp is 67, so i'm getting to work right away on motion 27-a. the previous motion 27, which i started before our trip to france and continued until yesterday, was a failure. so rather than struggle any more with it, i scrapped it and am starting fresh. the nature of the new direction of my motion series is such that they can't be overworked. they need to be one motion. one event. and if i lose my connection to that mark-making event, it's over.

pics of the stages of work will be posted as they become available.

continuing work on motion 27 today /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL  of motion 27 as it looked at 3 pm

2:40 PM: here's where i'm stopping for the day. about an hour ago the painting had become too heavy & congested, so i did a scrub with solvent and now, as you can see below on the right, it's too light & lacking a focal point. which gives me something to sleep on! lets see what happens tomorrow.

in this detail on the right i think there are some successful passages, but the entire painting needs to sing, and that has not yet happened.

it may be that i needed to do some warm up exercises before jumping into this one the day after a 2 week break & 36+ hours of travel with no sleep.

12:45 pm: continuing work on motion 27

at work on motion 27 this morning

11:18 AM: i got a good nights sleep & am 75% through my jet lag, so it's much easier to work today. i flipped the canvas upside down, which i sometimes do to shake things up & introduce new imagery. more pics & commentary as the day progresses.