"dp creek II," day 2 / June 26, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

*dp creek II* at the end of my painting day today

4:20 PM: i took dp creek II further today, taking it slow, as i want to preserve the white of the canvas in some areas. the challenge is that it seems impossible to allow that energetic to take over, the one that allows my hand to follow my heart & my gut completely & not pay attention to what’s happening until i take a moment to step back & look. that’s the quality in the original, motion 28, which dan admired & is therefore the inspiration for this commissioned painting. when the roll of portrait linen i ordered arrives early next week, i’ll stretch a second canvas with the same dimensions, which will allow me to play more, since only one of the two is destined to hang in my friend’s home.

starting "dp creeek II" / June 25, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

4:10 PM: yesterday i stretched the canvas for dp creek II; a commissioned 42x66” painting in oil, colored pencil & oil stick on quadruple primed french portrait linen. as i wrote in an earlier post, it’s based upon motion 28, which my friend saw in the exhibition at space gallery. it’s an interesting challenge, in part because it involves returning to an older, by a few months, way of working. i don’t have motion 28; it’s in the gallery, but we went by last week & i studied it. my mentee k. is here today, & when he saw todays version he loved it and, as mikela might say, he was tempted suggest i leave it as is.

but i’ll definitely be doing more work on it tomorrow, so check back in & find out what happens!

tweaks to seventh month / June 24, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

8:02 AM: yesterday i stretched the canvas for my dp creek II commission. at the very end of the day, i spotted some areas of seventh month that needed to pop more. BELOW tou see the painting as it looked before my tweaks, and on the right, after.

more work on seventh month / June 21, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

4:45 PM: after being away for a week, yesterday in the studio was a blank. i couldn’t figure out why i was there or do anything productive.

today i was able to return to seventh month, one of the kyoto series, which are all 78x26” oil on linen. i think i did some good work, but i can’t write about it right now, as we have a visitor who just arrived at the house.

reflecting on recent work / June 17, 2019 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.

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" / June 15, 2019 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" / June 11, 2019 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 / June 10, 2019 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.

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 / June 9, 2019 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 / June 7, 2019 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.