second scroll study, 20 1/2 x 6 3/4" (52 x 17 cm.) /  by Philip Tarlow

3:30 PM: well the forecast was accurate; windy as hell today. i spent the entire day making this 2nd study for my scroll series, which ill be 84 x 24” on raw linen. this study is part collage; part watercolor & part crayon & pencil on paper.

it contains elements drawn from my motion & meta-motion series, as well as my most recent sky series. i probably put more work into this small study than i used to put into my sky series paintings. the collage element just happened and was not planned. how i’m going to translate something like this to the larger, much larger paintings on raw linen, i have no idea. the collage element is very important to the unexpected switching up of shapes in this study, and will be challenging to do on such a large scale.

i have the thought that i may use acrylic gesso selectively on the raw canvas, creating the rough equivalent of a collaged piece of white paper. but i’ve never done something like that, which is a big part of the challenge that feels to me like fun.

for me, this entire period feels like a coming together of all the paths i’ve taken in my career. a distillation of my mark making; a summation of my ever present love of pattern as well as my love for the sizzling vibrancy of the creek i’ve visited so many times, and will continue to paint plein air this coming spring.

in the process of making this study, i made quite a mess, with scraps of paper, inks, colored pencils strewn everywhere in my recently neatened up studio. i’ll get it cleaned up tomorrow. right now i just want to go back to the house & lie down.

first sketch for vertical scroll / 4 of my paintings hanging in a crestone/baca home /  by Philip Tarlow

2:54 PM: this is the first sketch on paper for a planned 80” tall scroll on unprimed linen i’m planning. what will it be? strips of unprimed belgian linen 84” high, maybe 24” wide. 4 interocnnected events drawing on rocks & water; motion series; sky series and as yet undiscovered riffs on my old friend taiga, who knew. an 11th century calligraphic rapper whose early teachers were chinese. whose hand was connected to the stars.

here are 4 shots of my paintings hanging in a home in crestone/baca.

a smaller sky painting as part of an experiment /  by Philip Tarlow

1/29/19 5:17 PM 16x16” / painted this morning

2:51 PM: i’m having issues with the heating in my studio. michael was able to get it up & running despite the fact that it needs a new part. but it cut out last night, so when i came in this morning it was an uncomfortable 52 degrees. he’ll be back over in a little while to see what’s going on, and in the mean time i have 2 space heaters running.

i’m trying an experiment involving 3 canvasses that will be shown one on top of the other. this is the first, and the next two will be quite different, but clearly related to this one. you’ll see where i’m headed, hopefully tomorrow, when i do the second of the 3. i don’t know yet myself how the other two will look exactly, but they will, if my idea is successful, create a spacial play, or riff, upon the forms of clouds, rocks & water.

an unusual day /  by Philip Tarlow

one of my gaze paintings newly hung in our friend’s house

8:15 PM: today we brought some paintings over to a friends house, which is for sale. she wanted the paintings so that buyers could walk into a more inviting, thought provoking space in an already very interesting architectural environment. we helped hang them and then she came over for dinner before leaving in the morning for santa fe, where she & her husband live. it was an opportunity to see my work in a beautiful architectural space.

continued studio cleanup/a photo from ca.1968-9 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:18 PM:work continues on creating some level of order in my studio. inevitably, i ran across archival material; photos and works on paper. this is a photo in 3 sections shot in ca. 1968-9 in athens, greece where i was living during that period. it was shot on kathari deftera, which corresponds to the first day of lent. traditionally, it’s a day when athenians, and indeed everyone in greece, celebrates by going out and flying kites, as well as feasting on the foods allowed during those days of fasting leading up to easter. the location is pnyka, or pnyx as it was called in ancient greece. it is a hill directly opposite the acropolis, which overlooks all of the vast attic plain, all the way down to the sea where, on a clear day, one can see as far as the port of piraeus.

hundreds of people would show up. mostly simple people, as opposed to the upper class. at that time there were very distinct regional groups: crete, macedonia, thrace,the peloponese, the islands, etc. they would dance, they would sing the songs of their homeland, and there was an overall festive atmosphere. for an american like myself, a brooklyn born boy, this was very new and very exciting and, most of all, very moving to observe. some of the photos i shot that day, all of which were developed and printed by marika manousaki, sister of my dear friend, the late painter yiorgos manousakis, became oil paintings. one of the most successful is in the collection of the late angelos delivorrias, former curator of the benaki museum in athens.

and all this came about as a reult of a studio re-org. not bad, eh?

studio cleanup today /  by Philip Tarlow

this morning our friend michael arrived at my studio to repair my water heater. it’s an on demand device, which heats the water that flows through my in-floor heating and comes out of the faucets & showerhead in my kitchen & bathroom. It’s going to take a week for the faulty part to arrive, and in the mean time i’ve placed 2 space heaters that run all night to prevent the pipes from freezing.

i can’t paint when there’s someone in the studio (except for k., my 12 year old mentee) so i began a long overdue cleanup. i keep putting it off because painting is always my priority and by the end of the day, i’m simply too exhausted. so it was a great opportunity, and i totally got into it. who knew i had such a variety of, for example reds? organizing them all and finding space for all those tubes is a challenge. I still have another full day of work, so i might as well continue tomorrow. the more solutions i found; for example i got all my brushes out the line of sight as you enter the studio, making the space seems far more open and uncluttered, the more my appetite for creating new paintings increased.

so that was my day today, and this afternoon we took our thrice weekly mile walk up to tashi gomang stupa and witnesses one more spectacular sunset over the san juan mountains, 40 miles across the valley.

changes to "1/1/19 4:21pm" and "8/24/17 7:34pm" /  by Philip Tarlow

3:50 PM: more changes today to these two paintings. see yesterdays blog post to make comparisons & read my commentary.

7 PM: so now i have a bit more time to review todays revisions. i was holding the thought that the paintings in this sseries needed to be painted in one or two sittings in order to have the same immediacy and freshness of my plein air works. wrong! actually, every morning when i enter the studio i see where i need to focus my attention. going back in doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t have that immediacy and freshness. especially when the oil paint is still a little wet from the previous day & i can, for example, blend the greys with off whites of wispy, fluffy clouds. as a result, and this can only be appreciated in person, the painting begins to approach the level of subtlety we see when gazing at the actual sky. still, it’s a PAINTING; marks, strokes on a 2 dimensional surface. if you google sky painitngs, you will find a plethora of, truth be told BAD paintings. the sky is easy pickins for painters who have little or no foundation in draftsmanship and sparce, if any, knowledge of the history of art. how did the artists of pomeii for example, paint their skies on the walls of their magnificent structures? constable? van gogh? jacob van ruisdael?

more work on "roiling," last worked on 10/16/18 and revisions of 3 sky paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

6:39 PM:the 3 sky paintings BELOW were revised today. i rotated, going from one to the other, using the same palette. about half way through i had to put out a second palette. it was like nothing i’ve ever done; like keeping 3 plates spinning. discoveries i made in one spilled over to the other two, and as a result there is a strong relationship between these paintings. i’m learning evrey day, studying the sky as we take our walks up to the stupa; as we drive home on our travels and as i gaze, every morning and evening form our windows out over the slv and at the peaks of the sangres.

roiling, 38x36” mixed media on canvas as it looked after my revisions yesterday morning

10:45 am: yesterday’s warm up was to do more work on this abstracted landscape, which was hanging in our living room since it was completed on 10/16/18. all of my frustration at not being able to make big, gestural marks as i progress with my sky series, was temporarily relieved by doing exactly that in this revision of a painting i was never completely satisfied with.

so how do i reconcile these two seemingly disparate paths. nothing to reconcile; they are one and the same.

a day of softening skies /  by Philip Tarlow

2:23 PM: yesterday i didn’t come to the studio as i was recovering from the side effects of my pneumonia vaccination & didn’t feel up to it. i took the opportunity to observe the late afternoon sky more carefully, and what i saw was a much more subtle, softer transition form cloud to sky than i had been painting.

so today i attempted to implement what i had observed. i think it’s an improvement, but overall these two paintings strike me as being too dark in tone. maybe my eye hasn’t yet adjusted to this new way of working. as always, i’ll know better in the morning, and especially when it gets to the point where i bring them over to the house for critical evaluation & comparison with the others in the series.

BELOW

upper left: 1/1/19, 4:21pm before todays changes; right: after

lower left: 8/24/17, 7:38pm  before; right: after changes

my ano kato series /  by Philip Tarlow

11:03 AM: resting today due to side effects from pneumonia shot. here’s one of my ano kato series, of paintings from a few years ago. ano kato means topsy turvey in greek.the series consists of about 30 paintings, all oil on linen. it reflects my love of views from above. this requires foreshortening, which for some artists may seem difficult, but when you love it and its in your dna, it’s pure joy and very easy to execute. this one is based upon photos taken at the denver museum of art and includes workmen helping to mount an exhibition. the patterning on the floor, aside form the foreshortening, was another element that excited me. some of this series can be found at gremillion & co. fine art, houston. others are in my collection.