continuing work on purple rock II /  by Philip Tarlow

purple rock II as it looked moments ago, at 4pm

4 PM: i knocked myself out doing a third round of adjustments, so i’ll get back to it in the morning. it’s always good to work on more than one & go back & forth, which is what i’ll likely do tomorrow. my dental implant took place only 4 days ago, and the stiches are still in. so when i get too tired or do too much it starts throbbing. time to lie down with mikela & relax.i

1:50 PM: purple rock II did not pass the essential first glance test when i walked in this morning, so i’ve been making more revisions. i haven’t been using black at all in this series, so my choice to include it today may be temporary. or i may tone it down so much that it no longer reads as black.

BELOW left: purple rock II yesterday, middle: today at 2pm & right: the painting at 4pm today

revising purple rock II /  by Philip Tarlow

3:45 PM: AFTER Hving been away for 5 days i was tired & kind of in shock the first 3 hours in my studio. and then, as often happens, i saw that something needed to be done to purple rock II, so i snapped into action. i actually think i was able to do decent work! using a mirror i borrowed from our friend kat, i shot a few photos of the painting reflected in this ornate mirror. bleary eyes, i’m returning to the house to follow the news about the disasterous fire at notre dame cathedral in paris.

post tedx, preparing to return to my studio tomorrow, a painting from 1980 surfaces /  by Philip Tarlow

the painting you see above was found in the home of a woman who lived in santa monica. when she died recently, her sister went through her possesions and discovered this painting. she looked at the signature, googled philip tarlow, found my number and called me to confirm the painting is mine. it now hangs in her home. it was painted in egg tempera shortly after my return form 15 streight years in greece, where egg tempera was my main medium. i learned to use this ancient technique from my greek mentors, and when i returned to the usa, i continued to use it. i lived in a penthouse appartment overlooking the sea, and would go out daily and shoot photos of these guys doing their exercises. it turned into a series.

just back from edwards after a lively, compelling stay. the TEDX YOUTH VAIL event was the best yet. it will be available on youTube in a few months ,when i’ll post the link. i was in tears practically the whole time not only because of the content of the presentations, but the heart energy. without exception, they were all coming from a deep, genuine space, informed by personal experiences.

we stayed at a friends house, where we always stay when we’re in edwards about once a month. this time there was a full house. although we didn’t know any of them, by the end, this morning, we were very close, we learned a lot about each other. we laughed a lot. we came up with ideas for each others dreams & visions. we gave each other feedback.

so tomorrow i’ll be back in my studio, and i’ll let you know how that goes.

TEDX YOUTH VAIL and a review of the process leading up to my current motion series /  by Philip Tarlow

3 pm: in an hour, TEDX YOUTH VAIL will commence. i’ve been coaching on of the speakers, whose topic is narcissim in contemporary life.

being away from my studio is always an opportunity review what i’ve been up to with fresh eyes. and when i give the people i’m with a tour of my site, i get to see the work through their eyes; always invaluable.

i had thought that by now i would have made my first foray out to the creek to paint plein air. i even said i was about to do that last week. but the weather hasn’t cooperated. not yet at least. so here we are at battle mountain high school. i have one of my thumb drives with me, and selected a few images to illustrate my process, from last years plein air sketches to the most recent abstracted motion paintings. this now seems to me like a very slow, slow motion production. like watching one of those videos showing the evolution of an embryo.

from the top left:

1) one of the hundreds of photos of the creek i’ve shot over the past few decades. 2) one of the trail drawings i’ve made on our afternoon walks up the creek. 3) my portable table & stool set up for a plein air session. 4) one of my plein air sketches in gouache on paper. 5) a recent motion series painting in oil on linen.

chora, andros /  by Philip Tarlow

6:46 PM: we’re traveling for a few days, so i won’t be posting from the studio until we’re back. these are 2 paintings done in 2005 and shown at a solo exhibition at skoufa gallery, kolonaki, athens. both are now in private collections in athens.

skoufa gallery during my 2010 solo exhibition

on the left: papayannis buys fish in the square, oil on linen. papayannis was our neighbor in the plakoures neighborhood of chora, on the sea. he was a wonderful man, a great husbandand the father of 2 chldren. once, when my back went out, eh healed me by kneeling on my spine and making some subtle moves he said he had learned from his mother in asia minor. she taught him well; my pain disappeared & i felt renewed. papayiannis was no ordinary priest. so when i spotted him in the square evaluating the freshly caught fish on that early fall day, i knew this was to become a painting.

and on the right, the view from stavropeda towards chora. the lone figure in the distance has been collecting chorta. as he strolled through the magical andros landscape, my soul swooned with the almost painful exquisite beauty of it all. remembering that moment, the painting emerged on it’s own.

tweaks to icy creek II and radical transformation of purple rock II /  by Philip Tarlow

purple rock II as it looked october 14, 2018 and on the right, after todays intervention/ it was 38x32” and is now a horizontal, 32x38”

3:15 PM: some of my earlier motion series paintings have survived. after a year of living with them, they passed the test. this one almost did, but not quite. so i painted over it, scraping off some of the over-painting to allow traces of the original to come through. the newer version contains many of the same shapes and marks. todays version not only reads better from a distance; it displays those essential marks that convet a certainty not found in the earlier version.

as well, i made a few tweaks to icy creek II, which i worked on extensively yesterday. BELOW you see the two side by side, yesterdays version on the left. the area that was bugging me was that purple-brown mass in the center, just beneath the red rock. it needed to be broken up, which i was able to with one swipe of a loaded brush, creating 2 distinct shapes where there was one, thereby allowing the entire composition to breathe and allowing ones vision to move across the surface without getting stuck in one spot.

on the RIGHT are 3 examples of the many hundreds of plein air studies in gouache on paper that serve as inspirations for the motion series paintings made in my studio over the past few years.

changes to icy creek II /  by Philip Tarlow

icy creek II 32x38”, after extensive work today

3:04 PM: i painted over yesterdays version of icy creek II and started over this morning. i have a phone call right now, so i’ll resume once i’m done with the call. in the mean time and to remind you, here’s yesterdays version.

my problem with yesterdays version, you may recall, was that it just didn’t hang together. some beautiful passages, but no real coherence overall, as a composition or, more importantly, as a vision. as time goes on, my experiences sitting at the creek and painting plein air have distilled down to the symphony of forms & colors you see above. as matisse showed us over & over, what matters is not the abolition of reality in favor of abstraction, but the conversion of reality into abstraction. this need arises, in part i believe, from gazing over and over at that particular segment of the natural world that attracts us until, at some moment, a light goes off and we know that we are not just looking at rocks, water & branches; rather we are looking at the dance of energy in material form.

re-visioning quantum rocks & icy creek II /  by Philip Tarlow

6:54 PM: after a delightful walk up north crestone creek, i’m back & ready to complete todays blog post. i think the first one i did this morning, my rework of quantum rocks, was successful. the second; my rework of icy creek II is in limbo. i spent my fresh morning energy on quantum rocks. what i did on icy creek II was a repetative going-thru-the-motions exercise, with no chi. there are good bits , but it doesn’t jell, doesn’t allow the eye to roam a coherent space. as you might have guessed, it will disappear tomorrow morning. the one area that works i sthis one, on the right. but i can’t save successful passages like this. a new language must emerge; a new set of organic relationships and unplanned, unexpected series of marks.this detail could, actually become a painting. but it won’t. the challenge tomorrow morning, and indeed every morning in my studio, is to invent the world anew. nothing more, nothing less.

2:15PM: after spending time this morning reworking quantum rocks, BELOW, i painted over icy creek II and began working into it with oil sticks; currently my preferred way of working. ABOVE is how it looked moments ago, just before my mentee, k. arrived for our weekly saturday session. usually when he’s here i’m able to get good woprk done, so maybe i’ll get back to work now & give you an update later this afternoon. on the right is the previous state of icy creek II, as it looked last time i worked on it, february 11th, at which point it was a vertical.

quantum rocks 38x38”, as it looked at noon

11:58 AM: continuing my revisions of earlier motion series paintings, after living with quantum rocks since it was completed on february 11, i began to see that, while it had beautiful passages, it wasn’t holding up to weeks of constant viewing. so this morning i took it back to my studio, along with one other painted around the same time, and painted over it. above you see the painting as it looked moments ago. i may continue working on it, or begin work on one of the others i’ reworking. on the right is how this painting looked before i began work this morning.

reorganizing my "recent work" page /  by Philip Tarlow

today i painted over double creek II, which i wasn’t happy with. but i wasn’t in the right space to re-work it, so that will happen tomorrow. as well, i dismantled triple creek & reconfigured it as a double, and painted over double creek II. could i have made this more confusing? ok, lets do that: i also painted over durango, which, while interesting, wasn’t up to my standards. on the right is durango before disappearing. that yellow background was too strong, and the discreet elements never quite jelled as a whole. i’m demanding of myself.

since i wasn’t in the right space to paint, i worked on my new recent page. click on the link below to view that page. i’m still adding labels to a few that are missing them, but it’s pretty far along.

https://www.philiptarlow.com/recent-1

re-work of double creek II, aspen creek & pink rocks /  by Philip Tarlow

3:53 PM: as my vision shifts, i’m updating older motion paintings that now seem too heavy and overloaded to my eye. aspen creek is certainly the first that struck me as i gazed around the studio this morning. while it was certainly a good painting, it seemed heavy handed when i compared it with what i’ve done over the past week or so.

aspen creek, 17 1/2x 68” post-revision

aspen creek BEFORE REVISIONS

next came pink rocks and double creek II. i’ll talk more about these after our afternoon creek walk.

i shot this a few hours ago while walking uo north crestone creek

PINK ROCKS: back from our walk, i can now give my thoughts on the work i did today. emboldended by what i’m reading in the matisse in morocco catalogue, i feel permission, as if i needed it, to take a series of shapes based upon natural forms and spin them out into endless configurations, endless combinations of colors and compositional variations. during our walk this afternoon i shot photos of the creek, which will give me more material. as well, tomorrow, weather permitting, i plan on going out to the creek for my first plein air session of the year. and i’m so curious to see what i do. instead of bringing my gouache colors, as i usually do, for starters i plan on bringing my colored pencils and a drawing pad. that will allow me to leave the heavy portable easel behind and thus be a lot more mobile.

BELOW: pink rocks. the rocks you see in the photo, above right, have been formed over eons, and bear witness to this process, which of course is ongoing. every mark; every subtle variation in color; every shape bear witness to the journey each individual rock has taken. they now find themselves bathed in an endless stream of pure mountain water. soon, the snowmelt will commence and many of them you see in this photo will have dissapeared beneath the rush of cascading water. they revel, i imagine, in this full body massage, which will last well into the month of may. some of them, the lighter ones, will find new resting places, giving them a new perspective