December 15, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

*12/10/18 4:42 PM* at the end of my painting day today

2:37 PM: i’m stopping here for the day. i can’t wait to get back to it tomorrow morning. this style of painting is very familiar to me from my 15 years of painting in greece. my friend/mentor yannis tsarouchis and my former mother-in-law, the late niki karagatsi, introduced me to the technique of applying a tinted ground and painting over it, giving the entire image a unity & coherence otherwise impossible to attain. this was, of course, based upon byzantine prototypes. so, after their introduction, i also studies byzantine icons carefully, both in museums, private homes and on mt. athos, where i stayed for about a week.

i have hundreds if not thousands of photos i’ve taken of the evening sky, mostly as viewed form our house in the baca grande. many of them will be candidates for future paintings, which one day will hang together in an exhibition of sky paintings. it would be cool to have this exhibition in a large gallery or museum, with one room devoted to sky paintings, another to motion paintings and a third devoted to the on site plein air paintings in gouache on paper, which serve as inspiration for the entire motion and post-motion series. that would tell the story of this segment of my life and work. hopefully i’ll be alive and kicking so that i could give a few talks about the whole process, and acknowledge my mentors for their inspiration and support!

at work this morning on *12/10/18 4:42 PM*

1:35 PM: this morning i started work on a 32x32” painting on primed linen. this is the first in a new series of paintings based upon the numerous photos i’ve taken of crestone/baca skies, mostly around sunset. this particular one, which was shot at the same date & time as the title, was rather unusual in the layering of dark clouds, light clouds & blue sky. it’s being painted over a thin acrylic siena ground, which i applied yesterday, it’s kind of a nice relief from the intensity of the abstracted creek paintings i’ve been making as part of my post-motion series. work will continue for another hour or so, before we take our afternoon walk up to tashi gomang stupa.

preparing a 32x32" canvas for "12/10/18 sky, 4:42pm" / December 14, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

just back from our trip to edwards, where we had some excellent moments with the middle school students, who are preparing their projects. my first step should really be to clean up my studio, which is a mess. but i couldn’t resist the temptation to begin a project many months, even years in the making. as those of you who follow me on FB know, i’ve taken & posted thousands of photos of the crestone/baca sky. i’ve has a growing urge to make paintings of some of them.

so i stretched a 32x32” canvas and prepared it with a tinted ground; something i used to do regularly but haven’t done in a long time. the ground in in a thinned out acrylic, so it will be totally dry by tomorrow, when i may launch into the painting, unless i make studio clean-up more of a priority.

falling trees continued/ and tree resting tweaked & brought to our house / December 10, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:53 PM: i worked on canvasses 3 & 4 of 4, which are meant to be hung in 2 rows of two. at the end of my painting day, i lightened the lower left corner of resting tree, which, after glancing at it repeatedly during the day, seemed a bit too heavy.

i started work on the second and third of the falling trees grouping of canvasses.

falling trees, 16x20" and a last minue update to tree resting / December 9, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

*tree resting* following my end of day adjustment’

5:12 PM: just before leaving the studio, i had the urge to make some changes to tree resting, which i’d been evuating all day as i worked on the new one.

starting the drawing for *falling trees II*

12:58 PM: i have 4 canvasses, 16x20”, which i’ll be working on over the next week or so. this is the first: falling trees.

once they’re complete, i may see how they work together in a grid pattern that can be changed by the collector, allowing for a constantly transforming image.

k. & i paint together / December 8, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

7:25 PM: my mentee k. came to the studio today for 3 hours. he completed work on his very beautiful cello painting, and i did more work on tree resting. k. is getting really good; bear in mind this is only his second oil painting and just look at how elegantly sophisticated it is! he added the bow and the stand beneath the cello today, which has made all the difference.

as for tree resting, what can i say? maybe later today i’ll post the numerous revisions this painting has undergone.

more work on tree resting / December 7, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3 PM: i added a bare branch over the ice on the right, allowing the eye to register the ice as being below the branch, thus providing a greater sense of space & depth.as well, i added some darker areas of shadow where the ice eds and rocks begin, on the lower portion. i done for the day, so i’ll clean up, go back to the house & find out the latest political bombshells.

2:11 PM: this morning was foggy, with poor natural light, nonetheless, i continued work on tree resting until the sun finally broke through around noon. i did quite a bit on tree resting, introducing an area of ice in the center, which both gave the composition some breathing room and has made it a far more compelling painting, i think. all the paintings need to be seen in person, this one especially. there are some subtle oranges and reds on the right that lose their sexiness on the computer screen.

back at work on tree resting today / December 6, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3pm: tree resting at 3pm. it’s approaching the point where it has it’s identity but not yet singing.more tomorrow.

12:35 PM: i’m leaving yesterdays creek meandering alone till i determine whether to leave it as is or nor, and have launched back in to the recently scrumbled tree resting. work continues; updates as they occur…

meandering creek, day 1 / December 5, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

*meandering creek*, 36x32” as it looked at 3pm.

2:52 PM: i decided to leave tree resting alone for a while and start a new one, titled meandering creek. it’s 36x32” on portrait linen. thus far, i’ve used diluted oil paint, mostly for the grey gestural marks; colored pencils & crayons. it’s loosely based on photos i shot of the creek this past fall. the areas of exposed white canvas are typical for the paintings in this series that are early stage. i know i say this every time i’m at this stage, but i’d like to keep it light and not do the layering that many of the others in the series have.

on the left is a detail of tree resting as it looked after whiting over it late yesterday afternoon. perhaps you can see why i love what i have termed scrumbling.

work continues on resting tree today / December 4, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:33 PM: end of day scrumble. why? it was just what had to happen.

1pm: this morning i got a late start, and studied tree resting as i drank my matcha tea. it seemed a bit too grey, and i was wanting something to POP. so i went back into it, strategically using titanium/zinc white to indicate area of ice, but mainly for compositional reasons. i did a few things to the female nude figure, but not too much, so that she looks to be part of the abstracted landscape she occupies. there’s enough information for the viewer to have no doubt that these marks are all inspired by the creek, with it’s rushing water, turned to ice, flowing over rocks. but the painterly marks also could evoke the intimate flavors of a bonnard or vuillard, both of whom are never far from my awareness, along with the 10th C. chinese maters i’m currently studying. strange bedfellows? not really. what seems to be emerging in this stage of my life & work as an artist is the integration of my 7 month old self, seen here with my mother, and my 2018 self.

a figure enters the picture / December 3, 2018 by Philip Tarlow

3:32 PM: here’s where tree resting is at right now.once again, extraneous, unnecessary marks have been painted over. The ice floe retains the dominant space in the composition, with the mysterious femail figure seeming to approach it. two branches have been reintroduced. cleanup time.

**DETAIL** showing the female figure i introduced.

2 PM: this one is more of an odyssey than any of the others. it doesn’t really bother my; I love odysseys! i introduced a female figure standing on the rocks, which i photographed at fish creek in early fall. you can see her mid left, her head facing the left edge of the canvas. she’s naked, which of course she wasn’t in the photo. i’m going to continue working for another hour or so & see where it goes next.