work on ice in motion & meandering creek /  by Philip Tarlow

5:33 PM: my mentee, k., cam over today & started a painting based upon a photo i shot years ago of the napa valley vinyards. it’s spring break, so next week he can come over any time he feels like. that works for me; i do some of my best work when he’s in the studio. we don’t say much…we just work on our individual paintings & then i might give him some feedback.

today i worked on meandering creek, a painting i hadn’t touched since december 5th. it was an interesting start, but the more i looked at it, the more i saw how unresolved it was. i turned it on it’s side and began working over it and then into it. so at the end of my painting day it looked like what you see below.

meandering creek 32x36” oil & oil stick on linen

i switched off between meandering creek and motion 16, which i’ve been working on for the past few days. as you see below, today it took a similar path to the other recent paintings in this series; one of utter simplicity.

less yellow /  by Philip Tarlow

singing creek 38x78”, as it looked a few moments ago

12:19 PM: i knew yesterday at the end of the day that singing creek was far too yellow. so i went over it with a more tanish yellow, scraped into that and am now in the process of drawing into it with oil sticks. it may still need some toning down of the yellow, but it’s definitely better. i’m going to keep working & will update later in the afternoon.

plein air season is fast approaching. my first sortie, which will likely be before the end of the month. this was shot 8/28/17.

starting "singing creek," 38 x 78" /  by Philip Tarlow

singing creek 38x78” as it looked today at 2pm

today upon entering the studio i went straight for a 38x78” collaged canvas, which i last worked on a couple of yesrs ago and has been sitting in the studio. i felt the juice so i dove in, first making some marks in crayon, colored pencil, oil sticks and red chinese ink, then covering the entire canvas with yellow, in keeping with yesterdays yollowmania. then i scraped into it, revealing some of the marks i made today along with the ones i made 2 years ago.

then i cut loose with my brown oil stick and made the drawing you see. at the last minute i added the areas of white oil paint. then i looked at it and asked myself “did i really just do this yellow painting?” it seems way too much, but i’ll know in the morning.

yellow /  by Philip Tarlow

ice in motion 16 oil and oil stick on linen, 36x38”

as i opened the door to my studio this morning, on a stormy, snowy day, i immediately entered a different rhythm. different than yesterday. for the first time in a long time, i felt like putting on music. i have thoudands of songs on an old beat up ipod, form opera to blues & hip hop. i like to put it on shuffle, in keeping with my distaste for predictability. especially since reading the article you see below. here’s the link:

https://physics-astronomyblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-new-theory-on-time-indicates-present.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR380asUNZ98TiqXQ-6qY3FSVysGEyqKRISnOd5oKSNwCX2x1OCu-vNpKMU

so as i was listening to the music, i got into a groove. it was a yellow groove. i opened my drawer of tubes of yellow oil paint and immediately went for the jeaune brilliant foncé. bored with the tan grounds i’ve been using, it was with great relish, delight and a modicum of mischieviousness that i squeezed the yellow paint onto my palette. what followed may well disappear yet again tomorrow. these 2 paintings seem, for the moment, to like walking together. the one you see below came first and has that first burst of energy and discovery.

iced creek 32x36” collage, oil & oil stick on linen

changes to both the paintings i worked on yesterday /  by Philip Tarlow

iced creek 32x36” oil on linen

today started earlier than usual. we were up at 5 so mikela could leave for a series of meetings in alamosa. when she left it was snowing heavily with very low visibility. once i made sure she was safely on her way, i was able to get to the studio much earlier than usual at 8am. there’s a rain & snowstorm happening today & tomorrow, and the wet snow downed on of the power lines, cutting our electricity. it was very dark in the studio, so i decided to spend the day stretching canvases. then the lights flickered back on & off again for an hour, eventually remaining on. so i switched plans & started working on the 2 paintings i had been painting yesterday. i love diving into a painting i don’t especially love; it allows me to go anywhere and with an air of abandon sparked by my delight at making the image totally different. today, i think this may have been the more successful of the two. i may make more changes to ice in motion 16, BELOW, tomorrow.

ice in motion 16 36x38” oil on linen

changes to iced creek & ice in motion 16 /  by Philip Tarlow

4:29 PM: last night i had an interrupted sleep. it may have been the result of 2 things: our experience last week at the edwards charter school & watching candidate for president pete buttigieg being interviewed last night. i won’t go into detail, but, at the end of my dream, i was in a classroom where feedback was being given to the kids & teachers. when my y=turn came, i felt enraged. i expressed my rage loudly, and it was about the way we were short changing the students by not telling it like it is. that we are basically lying to them about the reality of the state our country is in, and how we all bear responsibility for this.

so when i entered my studio i was still in a state. i completely re-worked what used to be motion 16, which looked like what you see on the lower left, and now looks like what you see on the lower right.

simultaneously, i made chages to iced creek, which i had worked on yesterday. it was too pat; too easy. i went into it with gusto, and now it looks like what you see on the lower right. mofre later; i’ve got some vision issues & a, going home to lie down.

iced creek & icy creek in tandem /  by Philip Tarlow

iced creek at 2:30 pm 32x38”, oil on linen

DETAIL of iced creek

i had been reserving this canvas for one more sky painting, but today i decided to continue the ice series. this one shows traces of the underlying creek drawing, as well as hints of a japanese scroll painting (peeking through the lower central portion of the rock) i was looking at. the blues and reds underneath have bled into the beige overpainting, creating a warmer feel than the earlier paintings in this series. economy of line allows the brown and copper marks within the rock to sing, and the white of the ice hugs the rock in a lovers vice.

before starting work on iced creek, i completely reworked icy creek, which had been a vertical when i worked on it yesterday. now it joins with the rest of the ice crew, with it’s tan-ish ground as a field for the play of ice, water & rocks. my vision has always been, in this series, for the ambiguous, suggestive, mysterious shapes to suggest to the viewer an unspecified event.they defy clear interpretation and allow the viewer to dream. iced creek, above, may not have attained this state as of yet. we’ll see tomorrow morning.

icy creek post-op /  by Philip Tarlow

1:14 PM:my gum surgery was friday morning. he took a piece of my palette & used that to fill in a space in one of my lower teeth. so 2 sets of stitches. yesterday there pretty out of it. today as well, but i felt the need to get over here to my studio & at least get something done. i removed the scroll project series of 4 raw raw pieces of linen from the wall & rolled them up. in the end, i’m not into painting on raw linen. at least not right now.

so i made a few changes to icy creek, which was a preparatory study for the scrolls. you might say i gave it a kick in the balls, with the introduction of black, pink & a red dot. below you see the 2/28 version on the left and todays version right.

this morning i recieved notice from space gallery that the may show in which i’m one of 4 artists participating, has a new title: environment remixed. here’s the invitation

3/18/2016 /  by Philip Tarlow

about 2 years ago i was in the thick of my gaze series.it started when i took a closer look at vermeer’s portraits. i realized that he was an even greater artist than i had suspected. he has attained more recognition from a wider audience as a result of the book & film about the girl with the pearl earing.

the original can be found in the mauritshuis, in the hague, netherlands.

i began making collaged paintings using old maps of maine given to me by my friend dan, and acrylic paints. at first, i focused uniquely on vermeer, but then expanded to fayum portraits, portraits based upon photos of 19th c.native americans, and more.

it was a period of great discovery for me. you can view the series here:

pink enters the scene /  by Philip Tarlow

the 4 scroll painting, as yet unnamed, following this mornings work

12:29 PM: i had very little time to work this morning. as i looked at this large composition, it felt too monochromatic. i mixed a little red into the white gesso i’ve been using in this painting and the resulting pink felt like it was breathing life into the forms. i’ll have 3 days to let it settle, then when we’re back we’ll see where i go next.