roiling renewed / icy creek /  by Philip Tarlow

icy creek, 18 x 48” mixed media & collage on canvas

6 pm: after working on roiling, below, i felt revved up. i had my colors on the palette & i was ready to go. this canvas has been sitting in a stack of unresolved paintings in a corner of my studio. i snatched it up and lay it on my big table. i was in that action state, where my body takes the lead and i follow. i liberally applied the off white oil colors i had already prepared, then scraped, revealing the layers of collage & acryllic & oil paint below. i grabbed a fat black oil stick & began drawing rocks, glancing now & then at large printouts i have, of my creek photos. the ones i was referring to happened to be early spring images of the rocks & water surrounded by, immersed in, ice. white ice, with bare branches interrupting the starkness of the white, which formed curves around the big rocks like the collar of a white blouse wraps around the neck. it was unexpected. and rewarding.

1:36 PM: i re-evaluated roiling, which is part of my meta-motion series, yesterday & decided it needed to change. for a change! as you will see below, the busyness & confusion of the previous state is transformed into a single, monolithic image of an abstracted rock, with marks that matter more. an under-shadow of the previous state is visible, & lens both color, predominantly blue, and suggestive forms to the overall image.

this appears to be a new phase in the series of abstracted creek-scapes i’ve been engaged in for years. i don’t really want to analyse it. what i can do is identify what is emerging. there is more reliance on the kind of gestural drawing that defines and permeates much of my path as a painter. there seems to be greater certainty in my mark making and my use of color. in this latest painting especially, i can clearly see how i could not have reached this moment without my predecessors. that’s all i’m going to say right now.

here’s the before & after:

i’m still working, so stay tuned.

about to go to the studio & see what transpires / my new favorite watch /  by Philip Tarlow

9:08 am: getting a late start today; still in pre-shower mode. i have an idea, which i plan on working on parallel with the scroll project. it’s based upon a conversation we had yesterday with an old friend. there’s the potential for commissions along the lines of my ano kato series, and i may experiement with one or two. the first could be on an already stretched & primed canvas intended for a sky series painting.

this is the newest addition to my watch collection. i’ve put my entire collection in a drawer and am only wearing this swatch. right now, i can’t think of anything that can compare with it’s cosmic design.

more later in the day….

continuation of the 2/4/19 drawing on arches paper /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL following todays additions

2:54 PM: to day was our first day back following our trip to edwards to work with the kids & teachers at the middle school on using our product to create and develop projects related to topics the teachers have introduced.

i got the second of two shingles vaccinations on wednesday and, as predicted my arm is swollen & i’m feeling achy & off. so i was only able to work on the drawing for a short time. below you see the changes from the 2/4 version, on the left to todays additions, on the right. assuming i feel better by tomorrow, i may be able to take it further & complete this drawing, and continue work on my vertical scroll project. the unprimed linen should arrive mid-week, so i can begin cutting 84” high strips & experimenting.

a new drawing on arches paper /  by Philip Tarlow

space gallery, where i’ll be showing in may with 2 other gallery artists, requested a few more of my drawings on arches paper. i started working on one today & will resume once we’re back from edwards/vail. it resemmbles the other 3 i’ve done, but is, i believe more evolved, and certainly influenced by the work i’ve done since then.

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.