revisions to easter creek & windy creek /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of windy creek at about 2:15 this afternoon

2:01 PM: following yesterday mornings brief, very productive burst of energy working on motion 25, i was inspired to revisit windy creek & easter creek, both 48x20.” i last worked on them on april 30th, which seems way long ago. i was pretty happy with the results, & ready to declare them resolved. as you know if you are a regular visitor to this blog, nothing is resolved until it leaves my studio, either for an exhibition or a new home somewhere. marks beget marks; discoveries beget discoveries. changes are especially likely just after photographic the piece, or just as i’m about to walk out the door to return home. the mind, as matisse has often noted, is atricky thing. ready to impose order at the drop of a hat. opinionated as a MF. a dictator at best, a destroyer of inspiration at worst. alas, where would we all be without her?

BELOW: windy creek, left & easter creek, right

revisiting motion 25, last worked on 5/22/18 /  by Philip Tarlow

1:37 PM: we’d been looking at motion 25 critically for a few weeks, mikela & i. the decision was made a few days ago that it was a candidate for a paint-over & fresh start. that’s what happened this morning, after knocking over mikela’s fresh brewed coffee & brewing a fresh moka pot, which actually turned out better than the first.

i was prompted to leave a small area of white canvas, which does not exist in the recent series of post-motion paintings. this, in turn, prompted a lighter touch. on the right, a detail of the painting in the mirror i borrowed from our friend kat.

BELOW: motion 25 as it looked on 5/22/18 and, on the right today:

working on windy creek /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of windy creek as it looked moments ago

2:31 PM: so today i tackled windy creek, the second of the 48 x 20” canvases intended for the boulder offices i spoke about. initially i had done a version on a pinkish ground, which was interesting, but weak in many respects, BELOW: you see the original version on the left and what i did today on the right.

i feel the image on the beige ground pops more and is more coherent compositionally. i find the detail you see on the right especially delicious, with the juxtaposition of pink & blue together with the white water-ripple forms creating some magic.

one difference between these last 3 & the previous paintings in the series is that rocks now morph into birds; frogs; horse heads….whatever you see. the sign for rocks has opened up to include other beings. yes, i consider the rocks beings. the 3 of them work well together and should be dry enough to bring with us by the time we go to boulder.

continued refinement today of spring creek & easter creek /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of spring creek

4:23 PM: i came in this morning with fresh energy. with the awareness that it only lasts 2-3 hours, i jumped right into revisions, laying down a new, lighter ground over yesterdays versions. then i decided to return to my brushes, instead of relying mainly on my oil sticks. working into the still wet, light beige ground with my fan brushes was a delight; i was missing them and the calligraphic dances they allow me. they both pop, and they are both closer than ever to resolution. the signs & symbols that have been emerging in this ongoing process take on a kind of playful air with these brighter colors and forms stripped of all excess.

as soon as they dry, i’ll take them over to the house for the true test. there, they will hang in the same room as their siblings, and we’ll see how they hold up. or, how their siblings hold up! frequently earlier paintings reveal their weaknesses when compared with newer, stronger pieces. often they end up being painted over and reborn.

BELOW: left: easter creek/right: spring creek

starting windy creek, 48x20" /  by Philip Tarlow

5 recent motion series paintings on my studio’s east wall. the one i started today is second in from the right

2:53 PM: i felt when i entered the studio that the work i did yesterday may have resolved those 2 paintings: spring creek & . so i began work on the third & final long narrow or “skinny” painting, which are being proposed for the walls of a boulder office.

i didn’t get to bed till unusualy late last night, so i’m a little off today. from where i’m sitting though, these 5 paintings work well together. i’m quitting early to rest up before we drive into alamosa (1 hour) for a meeting over pizza & beer. i’ll determine better in the morning which ones demand more work & which are OK. on the RIGHT: windy creek, 48x20”, which i began working on this morning

starting easter creek, continuing work on spring creek, more modifications to purple rock ii & my mentee k. continues his most excellent landscape painting /  by Philip Tarlow

the 3 paintings i worked on today: left to right-purple rock II, spring creek and easter creek

this is the landscape my mentee k. is working on. he was in my studio today. i think it’s extratordinary. he’s 13.

5:02 PM: this morning my energy was high, and i was able to continue wrok on spring creek & purple rock II as well as strating working on the new easter creek: 48x20”. you can see all three hanging on my east studio wall, ABOVE.

purple rock II

purple rock II may be close to being resolved. it has taken on a pinkish glow, and a few areas are inspired by taiga’s 18th c. hanging scrolls, some of which are painted on silk. this inspiration, which began yesterday, spilled over to the other two paintings and, i could say, into the small landscape my mentee k. continued working on.

because of this influence and the shift to a warmer ground color, it stands apart from the rest of the series and has begun to show the benefits of painting in layers, as i have been doing; one painting over another until resolution is attained.

spring creek has evolved and is in it’s best state yet, it’s so skinny: 12x48” that i was having a hard time compositionally. today for the first time it exhibits a coherence and flow. when you have a challenge like this, it’s very tempting to come form your head. that never works. one of the ways i deal with this is by deliberately working on 2 or today 3 canvasses on the same day. i forget about it, move on to a new reality and then am able to come back to it with a fresh eye, take more chances, then allow it to rest again.

continuing work on spring creek, and more modifications to purple rock ii /  by Philip Tarlow

2:50 PM: i did more work on these 2 paintings today. they have both been influenced by taiga, the 18th c. japanese landscape painter & calligrapher i so admire. the tall skinny format is proving to be more challenging than anticipated, especially taking into consideration how much i love that format & have used it in previous work. so as a result, spring creek has not yet sounded it’s note, although, as mikela remarked earlier, it does have some beautiful passages, especially on the lower 1/4 of the painting. but as yet, it doesn’t hang together as a composition. i may start work on the other two and that may lead to solutions that i can use in spring creek...

BELOW: left: purple rock II right: spring creek

continuing work on spring creek, and more modifications to purple rock II /  by Philip Tarlow

2:08 PM: today was a good day. i say was because i have to stop early due to an afternoon meeting, which will include one of our actionlab360 team members, who is driving up from boulder as i write this. so i should hear the sound of his tires on our dirt driveway momentarily. it’s a 4 hour drive, mostly at about 10,000 feet altitude.

after starting work yesterday on the first “long skinny,” (48x12”) i realized immediately that today i would need to work on at least 2 at the same time. otherwise it gets too precious, especially because spring creek is, potentially, site specific, if the intended client likes it. sorry to be so mysterious, but i can’t really talk too much about this for a few weeks.

each successive painting inj this series takes my aesthetic a bit further. today, for example, when i got a little stuck i referred to my book on the work of 18th c. japanese landscape painter & calligrapher taiga. i took a long glance at how he handles the space in some of his tall skinny japanese landscape paintings, many of which are sections of large screens with 4, 6 sometimes more sections. that was helpful, and contributed to a solution which may very well migrate to the remaining two tall skinnies. in the mean time, purple rock II gained from this research.

BELOW: spring creek on the left and purple rock II on the right, as they looked at the end of my painting day today.

starting spring creek / what matisse said /  by Philip Tarlow

2:56 PM: this morning while having my matcha tea, i cam across this quote by henri matisse. it speaks for itself, but i am finding the great master’s words especially relevant to where i’m at right now.

spring creek, 48x12” oil on canvas at 2pm today

today i stretched the third of 3 tall skinny canvasses which are candidates for a doctors office in boulder. i began work on the skinniest: 48x12”. i’m not yet used to the new non-toxic, solvent free medium i’m using, in order to avoid the dangers to my health from using the gamsol product. it’s going to take me a while to learn it’s peculiarities. nonetheless, i began working, and the painting, titled spring creek, as at the early stage you see here. i’ll likely begin work on the second canvas tomorrow, so that i can go back & forth, which keeps me from getting too attached. it lacks the subtlety of the others, but this is only the first of many layers., it’s the layering that begins producing those unplanned passages i so love, which are always suggestive, enigmatic.

stretching long narrow vertical canvases / last minute adjustments to purple rock II /  by Philip Tarlow

4:58 PM: today, up until about an hour before leaivng the studio, i was mired in tiresome but necessary paperwork & phone calls. so that makes 2 days in a row that i haven’t painted, even though i was in the studio. unremarkable? perhaps for you. but for me, it’s painful.

so now that i got that off my chest, lets get to what happened during the last 2 hours today. i decided to make 3 new tall skinny paintings: two 48x20” and one 48x12”. they both will be verticles, intended for available walls in a professional office space in boulder. it’s challenging to stretch a canvas with those dimensions & not have wrinkles show up. on the 12 incher, they did, so i wet the back to shrink the canvas & eliminate the wrinkles. we’ll see in the morning. there’s a danger the canvas will shrink so much that it warps. we’ll see in the morning. these are lighter weight stretcher bars than i normally use, and thus more prone to warping. if i could afford it right now (we’re tight because of where we’re at with out start up educational product) i’d get those super strong stretcher bars i see on blick.

but before walking out the door & going 500 feet to our house, i impulsively grabbed a blue oil stick and began making marks on a painting i had intended to work on tomorrow morning; it was too dispersed.

i actually love those moments of impulsivity. the energy had been buiding all day. “what’s the fucking point?” i asked myself while sifting through a stack of piss-pointless paperwork. “what’s the fucking point?” i wondered as i made calls to various institutions that like to warn you “this call is being recorded….” and what, pray tell, is NOT being recorded? “all of our agents are helping oher customers, please leave your name and number and someone will call you back shortly”

i don’t normally go off like this. stuff happens.

inevitably, what’s been fermenting within me for years will emerge in the paintings i’ll be executing over the next period of time. and, speaking of time, mikela and i have decided that when people start fishing to learn our ages, we will now respond “i’m 1000 years old.” it happened at the passover seder the other night. they try & pin you down, using well known events (in this case the dictatorship in greece, which i lived through) to zero in on a likely age, when i begin to get that vibe, my answer will be “i’m 1000 years old.” now that we’re 1000 years old, it feels good. it feels right. so next year i’ll be 1001….big deal!

so anyway, getting back to the impulsive marks i made at the very end of my day in the studio, here’s purple rock II before (left) & after (right) my impulsive marks. good night friends.