reflecting on recent work /  by Philip Tarlow

1:49 PM, edwards, co. sitting in our friend kat’s living room watching the passing thunderstorms, i am reflecting on my recent work as we prepare to return home wednesday night, after a week of travel.

motion 28 7/11/18

the 6 painitngs BELOW were all executed between late march and the end of june of this year. the one on the right, motion 28, was completed about a year ago. the 42x66” commission i’m about to begin will be based on motion 28, which is part of my exhibition current exhibition at space gallery in denver. so i need to somehow put myself back into that space. an interesting challenge.

drawing plays a bigger part in the work from that period. the trees, rocks & branches have not yet been so simplified and abstracted that they are mere suggestions, leaving more space for the viewer to make up a story, and literally leaving more space.

dp creek II, 42x66" /  by Philip Tarlow

10am, basalt:

looks like i’ll be doing a commissioned site specific painting for a dear friend, which will hang in his bedroom and be 42x66” along the lines of this painting he saw & admired in my current show at space gallery in denver.

on the RIGHT: the painting as it looked hanging in the show.

BELOW is a suite of 4 drawings made 2 days ago at one of my favorite pleces to make drawings: h&h restaurant in edwards. i can usually get the perfect distance form my subjects without them noticing that i’m drawing them, which preserves the authenticity of the moment.

the oyung girl on the upper left is the daughter of one of the 2 people we were meeting with, and was keeping herself bufy on her phone. the guy on the upper right is one of the two people we were meeting with. the two drawings on the bottom are anonymous people having coffee in the restaurant, which is a very open, bright space with natural lighting form large floor to ceiling windows.

the other favorite place is a coffee shop in carbondale, where we’ll be tomorrow.

morework on "dp creek" /  by Philip Tarlow

dp creek, 32 x 40” mixed media on linen

5:51 PM: so earlier in my post, i said i wouldn’t be able to bring this new painting with us to the home of the friend who wants to see what it might look like in his home. but i figured out a way, by having lying face up in the rear of our suv, so that the still wet oil paint & oil stick wouldn’t touch anything.

it’s been nice to take a break from my japanese series. it allowed me to it allowed me to re-visit the post-motion series and see how the lessons learned translating taiga into a 21st c. idiom spill over into the post-motion work, which is inspired by years of plein air painting at our local creek.

so how would you describe the difference between the two? i’d say todays iteration is less descriptive, more evocative, more whimsacle. more focused on the drawing.

1:03 PM: it’s crunch time, as we’re leaving tomorrow, so i tried to get some more work in on the new dp creek before diving in to the paperwork i have to take care of by the end of the day today.

so the work i did on dp creek is an improvement from yesterdays version, where the composition was kind of split into 2 competing parts. BELOW left=yesterdays version, right: todays. it still needs work, however, but i don’t dare touch it till we’re back. we’ll be visiting with the person for whom it’s intended, but i can’t bring it with us because it’s still too fresh.

starting "dp creek"; a site specific painting for a friend's home /  by Philip Tarlow

4:10 PM: this morning i was on the phone with my dental surgeon’s office figuring out what to do about an inflamed & mildly infected dental implant site. of course antibiotics were prescribed. i don’t like taking them, but i don’t have a choice right now.

dp creek, 32x40” mixed media on linen

so when i finally got to the studio, it was later than usual. a friend admired one of the paintings in my current show & was considering it for his home. i discovered that the ideal dimensions were more of a horizontal painting, instead of the square one in the show. so i decided to make one with those horizontal dimensions, & if he likes it, great. otherwise we’ll find a different solution.

i love making site specific paintings, so i dove in with great relish, and here’s where dp creek is at right now, as the skies darken & thunderstorms approach, true to out annual monsoonal flow.

starting seventh month /  by Philip Tarlow

today i started work on the third painitng in this series, titled seventh month. here’s how it looked at the end of my painting day, and i’ll say more when we get back from our trail walk.

6:49 PM: so we’re back. i think this may be the best of the 3. i’m finding my groove, beginnig to seamlessly integrate creek-scapes with taiga’s japanese landscapes; my technique with his. the trees in this one, for example, are mostly inspired by aspens i photographed yesterday on the trail.

the overall tan-ish color ties the 3 painitngs together, and the beautiful pinkish color is made by the superb williamsburg oils company.

you can see all three paintings, side by side, BELOW. I may need to wait till be rturn from our upcomong week long trip to begin the 4th in the series, although i’ll be able to stretch the canvas before we leave, so that it will be ready & waiting when we return.

sixth month, day 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

7:48 PM: and one final end of day move. i couldn’t leave the studio without lightening up that center-right passage. so i did, and the key turned out to be the vertical scrape marks i made, which read as more of the tree trunks but with a different spin than the others, providing a complexity & richness that pushes thiis painting into new territory.

2:20 PM: as you will read below, i had thought i was done with sixth month, at least for today. but that orage rock was bugging me. the more i looked, the more it seemed to unreasonably dominate the composition. know why? it was coming from my head, not my gut. so here’s the latest iteration, which i can’t promise will be the last for the day.

in a nutshell, my way of working could be encapsulated by the letters LSH, which stand for: letting stuff happen.

ABOVE: 2 DETAILS from sixth month, which i worked on this morning

11:35 AM: i got an early start today. one of the first things that caught my eye as i surveyed yesterdays work, thumbed through my taiga book & studies my printouts of creek photos i’ve taken over the past few years, was CANTON ROSE, a color created by williamsburg paints. i find it is unmatched by any of the oil colors i have at my disposal. and sixth month was just begging for it.

so i began brushing it horizontally across the canvas, using one of my many fan brushes. i also worked extensively on the lower 1/3 of the painting, aliminating some of the more obvious references to taiga’s paintings & introducing some rocks from north crestone creek.

i feel as though, perhaps, i need to give it a rest so as not to overwork it, & perhaps use the rest of my work day to stretch another 78x26 canvas, using the new 10 yard roll of linen that was delivered a few days ago. i want there to be enough indicators that a japanese audience familiar with taiga’s oeuvre would be able to get that he is the source of my inspiration for this series of paintings, and that they are 21st century loose interpretations. and i want that dream world taiga is so masterful at creating to translate as well.

sixth month, day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:49 PM: gotta get movin’ so we can take our trail walk before the predicted thunderstorms arrive at about 6pm. so i’ll write more about the work i did today later. here’s the painting as it looked moments ago. as you can tell if you look at the painting on yesterdays blog, i did quite a bit of work. when we get back late this afternoon, i’ll tell you, amongst other things, the role coffee played.

6:23 PM: GREAT trail walk in a thunderstorm with light to moderate rain & heavenly frangrances. we did hear a few louds cracks of thunder with a flash or two of lightning. the wet rocks bared their chests & glistened with their greys, tans, subtle oranges & subtle violets. oh, how fortinate to live amongst these rocks. the rock people.

so, back to sixth month. i’ve been looking at, making copies of taiga for years. i’ve never seen his paintings in person, and am sad i couldn’t be at his museum show in kyoto last year. this series allows me to insert myself, in a way, into his oevre in a way that would be otherwise impossible. i’m digging deep into my mark making & sensitivity to form & color to make this series of paintings. this is only the second, and already i’m exploding with enthusiasm and appreciation of who taiga was and is as a calligrapher & painter. the more i riff on his series of paintings of the 12 months of the year, the more i see parallels not only with our crestone/baca landscape, but with my particular visual language, as it has evolved over decades.

so i promised to talk about the role of coffee in my work this morning. i fancy myself a master brewer. i research types of raw beans, then i roast them within 48 hours of brewing & brew using one of my three ss moka pots, both beautifully constructed in italy. i don’t actually drink coffe, since it upsets my intestines. or it used to. today i decided to give it another try. so i made a very small amount in the smaller moka pot i keep in the studio. i added a little unsweetened soy milk & gave it a try. within 10 minues, the buzz kicked in. at first, i didn’t know what to do with that surge of energy. then i figured out that i needed to get busy painting. while it lasted….about 2-3 hours, it really did support me in getting some good work done. my intestines seemed fine, so i’m going to give it a shot again tomorrow.

starting sixth month, 78 x 26" on the newly stretched canvas /  by Philip Tarlow

3:05 PM: today, after futzing around, mainly because i was avoiding making the first marks on this newly stretched canvas, i dove in, at first using colored pencils, then crayons and then some very diluted oils. as usual, my fear of screwing up the boyant aliveness of those first shapes & colors was there, on and off, throughout.

i like what happened, but i have absolutely no idea how i’m going to continue tomorrow. i mean, there’s such a delicate balance here….

i was browsing my icloud photos & found this one of me in Provincetown, shot in about 1960.

it’s the first time i’m using this “all purpose” linen form artfix, as opposed to their way more expensive portrait linen. so i was able to get 10 yards of 85” wide primed linen, which may be enough for the entire series, since i’m using the full width each time, but only 32” (26+the extra 6” for stretching) of the 10 yards. that means, if i do nothing but 78x26” paintings, i can get 14 paintings out of this roll.

k. was here today & started a new sky painting. he chose one of my many sky photos & found one he liked, so i printed it out & he’s working from that.

so lets see hwere i go with this one tomorrow. i feel like maybe i should stretch another one, so i don’t have to have all my eggs in one basket & can go back & forth between the two. but i’m excited at how this one began.

stretching a new 78 x 26" canvas /  by Philip Tarlow

stretching the 78x26” canvas this morning

6:46 PM: today i stretched a new 78x26” linen canvas for the second painting in this series, inspired by the great 18th c. painter/calligrapher, taiga. taiga is a contemporary energy, period. a timeless energy. he was ahead of his time, totally immersed in his time, a true painters painter. he had a major exhibition last year at rge kyoto museum. i am envisioning a show in japan, perhapds kyoto, showing these new works that will bring taiga into the 21st century. as if he needed it!

stretching a 78x26” canvas is tricky. at those dimensions, there’s a tendency for the canvas to form creases, so i had to remove some of the staples & re-stretch portions of the canvas. in the end, it’s tight as a drum and presents a beautiful surface to work on tomorrow.

on the other hand, WTF, i wonder, am i going to do tomorrow morning? ah, but isn’t that the not knowing i say i’m so in love with? yeah, but….walking up the trail a few hours ago, observing mind boggling beauty on all sides, in my head i sang songs i remembered from birchwoods, the magnificent camp i attended from the age of 5 to 16. read about it on my story page:

i thought of my dad as i sang, in my head, swing low sweet chariot. hear paul robeson sing it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSb273c9tm4

so why, i wondered this morning, why am i doing this? is it really going to move anyone? will it change their lives? will it feed their souls? i don’t mean to sound meldramatic, but, at the age i’ve reached, you start wondering about these things.

revisiting funky rocks, starting lichen 1 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:30 PM: funky rocks was on our wall in the house since i last worked on it, march 21. something shifted after the opening of the exhibition last thursday, and yesterday i brought it back over to the studio for more work. what i did is along the same lines as what happened yesterday with quantum rocks. which is that ir livened up, with more arears of contrast and a center of focus, which was not there previously. the compositions of the two paintings were more diffuse. so BELOW are the before (left) and after images.

DETAIL of lichen, 20x20” at the end of my painting day

lichen 1 is an experiment on a 20x20” canvas i had stretched a while back. it’s inspired by photos i shot on our last trail walk, when i was struck by the beauty of the lichen growing on most of the rocks lining the trail. i doubt if it will remain as is, and tomorrow will almost certainly bring changes, mostly in the direction of simplification and an overall lightening. but i can see the possibility for a series of small works along these lines. there is a delicacy to the actual lichen on the rocks which is, as yet missing form this rather heavy handed first stab. i’m inspired enough by the magic of the subject to persist, however.