ongoing work on icy creek & creek creatures / looking at my "ano kato" series /  by Philip Tarlow

4 PM: i was able to do more work on creek creatures before running out of steam. i think it has improved from the earlier version, and seems to be more in alignment with the suite of 6, which you can find in my 2/24 post, or at the top of the motion page. click on the link below to visit that page.

creek creatures, 16x20” as it at the end of my painting day today

icy creek 18x48” oil & collage on canvas 2017-19

creek creatures, 16x20” as it looked moments ago

2:27 PM: after watching a little of the cohen testamony & becoming profoundly bored, i came over to the studio & got back to wor. i re-engaged with icy creek, which i haven’t done any work on for about 2 weeks, and creek creatures, which i did work on yesterday. they are both still in flux, and icy creek has so many layers (it originally started out as a collage) that i have doubts as to weather it will ever be exhibited. but it’s a good testing ground, and my doubts as to whether it will ever be shown increase my capacity to take chances. creek creatures will likely undergo more changes before the day is over, and i may start work on a 32x36” stretched canvas which has a siena ground.

8:07 am: this morning, along with millions of other americans, we’re making an exception to our normal routine of starting our day by getting to work. this is usually prime time for us both. but we’re watching the testamony of michael cohen instead.

his testamony has not yet started, so i’m going to give an overview of my ano kato series, which some of you may not have looked at.

the series began with and was inspired by the painting you see ABOVE, titled parade, which was was created in 2009 and shown the following year in my solo exhibition at skoufa gallery in the kolonaki district of athens, greece. it is now in a private collection in athens.

parade was based upon a photo i shot afew years earlier from the 2nd floor balcony of skoufa gallery. a parade celebrating an important greek holiday was passing through skoufa street. as i looked down from the balcony, i was struck by the scene, enhansed by the sounds of the live music and enlivened by the crowds of onlookers. in that moments, i recognized how excited i was by this view from above and began immediately envisioning a painting based upon this moment. at the time, i didn’t envision that it might become an entire series of paintings.

in order to paint the views from above you see here, foreshortening is required. here’s a definition of foreshortening by marion boddy-evans:

foreshortening is a technique used in perspective to create the illusion of an object receding strongly into the distance or background. the illusion is created by the object appearing shorter than it is in reality, making it seem compressed. 

people often comment on how difficult they imagine it is to paint foreshortened figures. not if you love it! and i do. BELOW are 3 examples of foreshortened figures from paintings in the series

once i completed parade, i looked through my files and found a large number of photos that i had shot from above looking down, over a period of years. some were shot in museums; mainly moma and the metropolitan museums in nyc as well as the denver museum of art and the new, at the time acrpolis museum in athens. i launched into paintings based upon these photos before clearly cognizing that this was going to become a series, or coming up with the title: ano kato.

the process of making these paintings and painting all the foreshortened figures has been fully documented. looking back, i can see, from my current vantage point, how i could create an updated series, in which many of the figures are left in this state of becoming.

almost all the paintings in this series are now at gremillion & co. fine art in houston, where they were shown in a solo exhibition in 2010. and some are in private collections in houston, texas.

creek creatures, 16x20" oil on linen /  by Philip Tarlow

creek creatures 16x20” oil on linen

1:50 PM: back in the studio after our trip to the dentist in salida yesterday, i made a new painting, which was painted over a composition i wasn’t crazy about. following on the heels of mysterious creek, which was the last one i did, it has the same wide border and suggestive, creek derived forms. scraping into wet paint has become even more a part of the painting, whose identity rests heavily upon informed, accidental marks brimming with sexual innuendo and leaving the viewer space to roam and dream.

BELOW: left: mysterious creek, right: creek creatures

yesterday at the dentist i made this drawing of mikela with her periodontist, who, as you can see, was wearing a patterned shirt, which was fun to draw. as she worked and i drew, we talked politics.

visits to doctors & dentists and, recently, being on the campaign trail, have provided me with opportunities to engage in one of my favorite activities: observing and recording the everyday.

evolution /  by Philip Tarlow

1:48 PM: today is dentist day for mikela, so i’m writing this from our dentists office in salida. since i won’t be creating any new work in my studio today, i decided to create a comparative view showing the conncetion between my plein air creek studies and my latest oils. so on the left below, you see something that bears a striking resemblance to the small oil i made yesterday in the studio. what’s different is a certain hard to describe freedom. marks that are inspired by the the feeling, in the moment, of being phycially at the creek, with all of the associated sounds, sights & fragrances. the oil on the right is interesting in a different way. clearly, there’s more of my mind in it. yes, it too has an obvious spontaneity, it’s a spontaneity discovered after many failed attempts that were scraped away & painted over. in the plein air paintings, you have one shot. which is why i always bring more than 1 surface to paint on. if i’m painting in gouache, as i frequently do, i’ll have 3-4 pieces of paper taped to a board. that gives me a feeling of freedom. and usually, the 3rd one is better than the first. the first two are like warmups. but that’s not always true. there are so many variables: what’s the weather like?, where is the sun in the sky? how did i sleep? did i forget one of my important brushes? is it windy? (wind dries the gouache colors on my palette pretty quickly). is there a bear in the vicinity? more later; i’m going to talk to the dentist.

6th ice bound suite painting /  by Philip Tarlow

ice bound suite 6

3:10 pm: i painted over another painting today to create ice bound 6, making this a suite of six, which i hung 3 & 3. this may be how they are shown in the may exhibition, based of course on the feedback i get from gallery owner/director mike, who hasn’t yet seen them. they look cool on my studio wall, but this still leaves me with lots of questions as to how i’m going to execute my 84x24” scrolls on raw linen. i’ve got the linen, but haven’t yet cut it into 24” strips. i think it may have to happen in a burst of energy, where the solution emerges from the action of painting….

and BELOW: mysterious ice; , a painting i was about to paint over, but when i got as far as the border of the tan band od paint surrounding this image, i couldn’t bring myself to go any further. too beautiful to cover.

mysterious ice 16x20” oil on linen 2019

ice bound suite 5 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:31 PM: today one more ice bound suite series painting emerged: ice bound suite 5. unlike what happened yesterday, when 4 of these paintings emerged, today was spent on just this one 16x20” painting in oil on linen. it covers a painting made on february 18: frozen creek. the tan ground it’s painted on is somewhat darker than it’s 4 siblings. however the nature of the abstracted rocks & the single red branch are all in the same spirit and can coexist easily, as you can see below.

the ice bound suite /  by Philip Tarlow

3:08 PM: this morning i looked at the 4 16x20” canvasses i’ve been working on over the past week or so and saw them as a suite of 4. in order for that to happen, i needed to re-work all of them, and it was important that i do that in one shot so as to maintain the same energy. this also meant re-naming them all; they are now ice bound 1, 2, 3 and 4.

they represent a distillation of all that i’ve learned thus far in my motion series. i have the beginnings of a language of forms i can play with, play being the key word. i used oil paint and oil sticks. all 4 were painted over with the tan ground you see.

this is also preparation for the series of 4 84” high scrolls i’m planning on the raw linen i ordered, which arrived in the mail a few days ago.

view towards the acropolis, 2010 /  by Philip Tarlow

december morning, acropolis 35x72” oil on linen 2009

5:29 PM: today was dentist day, so i didn’t get to my studio. instead of my usual update on works in progress, i’m posting this 2010 painting, december morning, acropolis, on oil on line, 35x72” in oil on linen. follwoing a trip to athens and andros to visit my son & grandkids, i made a series of paintings based on photos i had shot.

DETAIL

having lived & painted in greece from 1964 through 1979, mostly in athens and on the cycladic island of andros, i was deeply familiar with the landscape & the light. so when mikela and i spent the day at the acropolis and on pnika, the hill just opposite the acropolis, it was with great emotion that i gazed at those tourists sitting on the rocks. i believe this comes through in the painting. my studio during thos years was in a neoclassical house in plaka, which can been seen in the distance on the left. the painting is done on a tinted ground, which is how i learned to work from my teachers & mentors during that period. it was shown in my 2010 solo show at skoufa gallery in the kolonaki neighborhood, athens. it’s now in a private collection on athens.

ice bound /  by Philip Tarlow

3:07 PM: i started another small (16x20”) oil on canvas today. it needs work, but tomorrow is dentist day, so i’ll resume work on ice bound on friday. i think the earlier version you see on the left, below, might be a better painting. but it’s history.

the painterly /  by Philip Tarlow

from thoughtco.com: The Tate Gallery's glossary says the term painterly "carries the implication that the artist is reveling in the manipulation of the oil paint itself and making the fullest use of its sensuous properties."

a good example can be found in any detail of a van gogh painting. the thoughtsco article goes on to say: a style that celebrates the medium that it was created in, ….rather than a style that tries to hide the act of creation or the medium used. It is a loose and expressive approach to the process of painting in which the brushstrokes (or even knife strokes, if any paint was applied with a palette knife) are visible.

if you make this van gogh detail larger by clicking on it, you will see a perfect example of the painterly.

detail of frozen creek, 16x20”

this quality is central to my work, and has been for my entire career. for the casual viewer, who may not have a grasp of the history of art, it’s a quality more easily understood and appreciated in a realist painting than in an abstract or, in my case, abstracted painting. in the small painting i made yesterday: frozen creek, it becomes easier to identify this quality after having had even a perfunctory introduction such as the one i’ve provided here.

started "frozen creek," 16x20" /  by Philip Tarlow

frozen creek 16x20” oil on linen 2018-2019

3:38 PM: i finished packing the 2 sky paintings this morning, which were picked up by ups an hour ago & are on their way to gremillion in houston. so i had a late start, but i didn’t think i’d be able to paint at all. i did this one rather quickly, and used my brushes instead of the oil sticks i’ve been using. the other thing that’s different is that the tanish ground was dry instead of wet as it was with the last few.