yesterdays mistakes, todays lessons /  by Philip Tarlow

2:18 PM: yesterday i worked most of the day on revising purple rock II. that was not a good idea. the painting had reached an interesting state of resolutiopn, which included marks inspired by japanese poetry & the work of the 18th century master, taiga. what i did was way too busy, although obviously i didn’t see it that way. and yes, i do regret painting over what was a very beautiful painting. today i painted over most of it and, after three or four aborted attempts, it reached a state of resolution, san japanese poetry. BELOW are three stages of purple rock II, with todays below and yesterdays on the upper right. on the left: how it looked before i messed with it yesterday!

i also revised spring creek, which suffered from the same business as purple creek II. it’s simpler now, allowing the eye to roam freely up & down the composition. in case you were wondering about the central image in the composition, you’re right.

BELOW left, yesterdays congested version and on the right, how the painting looks at the end of my painting day.

purple rock II revisions /  by Philip Tarlow

6:32:

ABOVE: 3 details of purple rock II following todays revisions. notice how some of the japanese poetry remains intact

2:37 PM: i had considered this painting resolved. but the work i did yesterday revising spring creek made me look again at purple rock II. an interesting evolution is occuring from, say the relatively recent pink rocks, below left, to the previous version of purple rock II (middle) to todays version of that same painting, on the right. i would characterize this evolution as going from discreet areas of activity to an all-over activity which still, however, works as a composition. verging on cluttered, yes, but to me it feels like the picture plane is now fully engaged. it walks that thin line between chaos and energetic, full engagement. are other paintings in this series to follow suit?

spring creek revisions /  by Philip Tarlow

spring creek, 48x20” at the end of my painting day

3:15 PM: after a day away from my studio, and upon first seeing spring creek, it seemed to bare, too spare. so i did considerable work on it, turning it horizontally for a while & pretending it was not a vertical. this helped me to make illogical, for a vertical composition, marks. they turned out to work quite well when i re-positioned it vertically. more taiga inspired poetry/calligraphy entered as well. in it’s present state the eye roams from mark to mark, making it’s own meaning out of the signs it encounters across the surface.

and now for a walk up the creek.

starting "to clearwater road" 26x78" /  by Philip Tarlow

to clearwater road 26x78”, at the end of my painting day today

2:45 PM: i was moved to start this rather large, for me, canvas by doing a riff on two of my 2015 collages, knowing me, it will likely morph as soon as we return form our short trip. for the moment, it’s a shift in my energy, which i needed after painting all those rocks! there is great joy in painting on a freshly stretched piece of french portrait linen, which accepts the brush like a true lover. we’ll see what happens on saturday, when i’m back in my studio.

more poetry, more taiga /  by Philip Tarlow

purple rock II as it looked at the end of my painting day today.

4PM: i got a very late start today, and was in doubt as to whether i’d be able to put brush to canvas at all. this was due to a presentation/proposal i needed to put together for a prospective client that needed to go out today.

at work an hour ago on purple rock II

so when i finally was able to send it off, it was tricky to switch gears. what i did was to gather all the strands of doubt and physical/mental exhaustion and weave them into that space i need to be in. anxious to continue the experiment i began yesterday: overlaying the existing purple rock II painting with marks inspired by taiga’s 18 th c. calligraphy, which also include the figure of a bull & some almost-comic-book figures representing the uzumasa festival.

as it turns out, this abstracted creek-scape on a neutral beige ground is an ideal setting for my take on this 18th century hanging scroll. after all, it’s a landscape painting based upon decades of studying our local creek, it’s rocks, branches and rushing water. and that’s pretty much what taiga & his buddies did, except that some of them were poets, and their poems often became a living, breathing part of those paintings. i am tempted, once this one is complete, to try this with some of the other paintings in this series, particularly the long narrow verticals that approximate the space of hanging scrolls.

enter taiga's uzumasa festival /  by Philip Tarlow

purple rock II as it looked at the end of my painting day today

3:03 PM: after many years of studying 18th c. calligrapher/landscape painter taiga, he has finally entered the picture. it was an unexpected move, which i have questions about. but all signs were pointing this direction, if you paid attention. if i paid attention!

there was a period when i made a series of studies in gouach on paper of his landscapes. and, intermittently, i have looked carefully at his landscapes & his calligraphy, with which i resonate more and more. i absolutely love the idea of combining painting with poetry, but i don’t feel that happening when i contemplate it using english characters. japanese characters are a different story. they are, for me, painterly marks. it’s an advantage that i don’t understand the japanese language.

so i began with purple rock II, which i worked on yesterday but was not satisfied with. i isolated 5 elements of the composition by painting over the rest of the canvas with a neutral beige color. then i proceeded to write over those elements and the space between them, using a fine watercolor brush and oil paint to replicate the ancient japanese marks i love, including sketches of a few comical figures that are part of the original 54” high hanging scroll, which is now in the gitter-yelen collection in new orleans. we’ll see tomorrow where this leads.

using my 2 hour window wisely /  by Philip Tarlow

desert at todays zen center luncheon

3:18 PM: just back from the annual luncheon at the zen center. the food was even more spectacular than in previous years; a true gourmet meal, reflecting everything the zen center & the zen tradition are about. we got to reconnect with old friends we haven’t seen since the last event in 2018.

we had to leave at 12:20 & needed to be back at the house at around noon to change. i also had scheduled a viber with our grandaughter in athens, which didn’t leave me much time to get somework done. i turned my attention to easter creek, which, after the work i did yesterday, was top heavy.but of course i couldn’t limit my changes to that upper portion of the composition and ended up changing everything. the upper right corner may have to change tomorrow.

BELOW you see yesterdays version on the left, and easter creek as it looked after todays intervention, on the right.

saturday in the studio: triple play /  by Philip Tarlow

ABOVE: left to right: icy creek, purple rock II and easter creek

2:57 PM:i started off my day in the ideal state of mind: not knowing. there are many different levels of not knowing, the highest being when you get kind of robotic in the positive sense & just do without thinking. of course this, in the wrong hands, could turn deadly. but in the right hands, it’s a recipe for meaningful marks.

DETAIL of icy creek

so i did more work on 3 paintings: purple rock II, icy creek and spring creek. icy creek had been hanging on my south studio wall & was a horizontal. i was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with it, until i final took it off the wall yesterday afternoon and painted over it at the very end of my work day, when the juices are flowing & i’ve found my rhythm. often, that’s when the not knowing kicks in at it’s very deepest level. it;s that WTF moment. and it doesn’t last long. so that, in my opinion, is the best of the 3. the other 2 need more work, although maybe not a lot.

and now my dear friends, up the creek we go, on one of our delightful afternoon walks. today we’ll go further up the trail than last time. tomorrow is a short work day, due to the annual luncheon at the zen center. we get to connect with crestonians we haven’t seen since the last luncheon, a year ago, hermits that we are.

changes to easter creek & purple rock II /  by Philip Tarlow

2:53 PM: easter creek needed an intervention. it gave the impression of 3 distinct areas of activity that were not fully integrated due in part to the lower portion of the painting, where the space was not functioning…..kind of like it was dead space. you can see what i’m trying to describe below, with yesterdays version on the left and todays on the right.

4:47 PM: you can forget about the one on the right. i went to fix that white bit that i introduced into the central portion & screwed it all up. there was a lot going on today. k. was here & did truly remarkable work, and i had to go back & forth to the house to supervise some repairs, so my focus was broken. i’ll get back into it tomorrow.on the right, a detail of easter creek before my unsuccessful intervention.