more on the evolution of the motion paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

day 1 of k’s new landscape painting, 16x16” oil on linen

6:20 PM: today my mentee k. came to the studio & started a beautiful new painting, which you see on the right.

BELOW: the two plein air gouaches on top reflect the evolution of decades of plein air painting here in crestone, and before that on the cycladic island of andros, greece. while the forms are becoming more and more simplified, the colors have remained more or less true to the earth colors of nature. in the 2 motion series paintings on the bottom, the abstracted rock forms have burst into color. reds and blues dominate, while the ground remains a tan-ish earth tone. each step of the way, these departures from the actual tones and colors i observe at the creek seem to me like a risky leap into the unknown. it’s a process. and there’s no short cut.

paintings i ran across /  by Philip Tarlow

3:09 PM: today was spent putting together a document for a new potential client who wants to surprise his wife for their anniversary. i was reminded how exhausting i find something like this, whereas i can spend the entire day painting and actually feel more energized at the end of the day! no big surprise, right?

so anyway, while organizing the 4 page document using the pages app, i came across some paintings i hadn’t looked at for a long time. here are some of them. hoping to get back in the groove tomorrow.

i haven’t included titles, dates & dimensions; maybe i’ll do that later from the house. right now, i gotta lie down!

scottie, day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

1:26 PM: i continued work on the small (11 3/4 x 8 1/2”) gouache on paper portrait of scottie. BELOW you see yesterdays version on the left; todays on the right. the abrupt transitions fomr light to dark, difficult to navigate with gouache colors, have softened. the whites in his beard have darkened so that they no longer pop. many changes have occured, and it now reads as a finished portrait. his deep and complex personality and his extraordinary/ordinary abilities as a healer are evident, at least to me. he worked on both mikela and i when we were in edwards for the TEDX youth event in vail. we both had the same experience. no ego. no “i’m gonna heal you.” in all the work we’ve had over the years, and we’ve had a lot, especially during the years we were leading personal growth seminars around the world, scottie stands out. no, jumps out as the real deal. i haven’t done a portrait in gouache in a long time, and this has whet my appetite for a series of images based on the olympics that i plan on doing soon.

scottie/ creek drawings /  by Philip Tarlow

3:08 PM: i think the solvents i’ve been using are adversely affecting my health. so i ordered some non-toxic oil painting mediums from blick. until they arrive & i can continue work on the motion series, i’ve started working on a small 9x12” portrait of scottie. we met in edwards during the TEDX youth event. we were both staying at our friend kat’s house, along with his wife, who is a wood sculptor and had some of her work on the stage at the event. i shot some photos of him at a restaurant one night & said i’d be using them for a portrait. because of my intensive schedule painting the motion series works, i didn’t really think i’d be painting his portrait for at least a few months. actually, it feels like a great change of pace, and i’m enjoying making this little painting in gouache on paper enormously.

it needs some softening, which i’ll try to do tomorrow. using gouache to make portraits is tricky, since sfumato (blending of the colors) is impossible, which is why oil painting was created

6:28 PM: we walked up north crestone creek this afternoon. at the head of the trail, after walking a mile up the dirt road (closed through the end of may) mikela continued up the trail while i walked down to the creek & made some small sketches. it’s the first time i’ve drawn or painted at the creek since late fall, 2018. a great delight it was, sitting on a rock & drawing. it opened my appetite for more plein air paintings as we move into spring & the weather warms. below are the 5 sketches i made, in chronoligical order upper left clockwise, with notations of the time in the lower right.

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.