is itsu resolved? / a bit more work on minoo /  by Philip Tarlow

11:25 am: my first take on a painting i worked on yesterday is always critical. especially with my new lenses. so my first hit when i walked in the door was it’s resolved! i invited mikela to walk over, and she got the same hit. the only area she felt might need a tweak are the 3 sketchy figures on the lower right. she felt the needed just a bit more definition.

she may have a point, so once i’m done with this first stage of todays post, i may go back into it & see where it takes me. this painting has such a delicate balance, i don’t want to overdo it.

12:27 pm: so i did go back in & make the changes to those 3 faces in the lower right grouping. and they absolutely did make a difference. if you scroll down & click on ther larger image, that difference is easier to observe.

2:52 PM: once i completed the tweaks to itsu, i did some more work on minoo, adding some subtle blues on the upper portion, as well as some titanium buff throughout, which had the effect of softening some of the transitions, thus establishing more harmony. a bit more blue in the upper portion suggests sky, without shouting: SKY! i keep wanting to add a few figures, but i’m not there yet.

revising "minoo" / starting "itsu" /  by Philip Tarlow

3:40 PM: this morning we walked up the trail, as we do every other day.

at work this morning on the new itsu

i arrived rather late in my studio, and started my painting day with a modest revision of minoo. the siena in the upper central portion was bothering me; perhaps yet another observation of somewhat bothersome colors, following my cataract surgery.

as well, i made some bolder, stronger rock marks at the bottom and added a bit of blue, which i believe has made a big difference. we’ll see how i feel about it tomorrow morning, but right now it seems like a much stronger painting.

DETAIL of itsu at the end of my painting day

i then launched into the new itsu, a japanese word i learned while reading about taiga. it means untrammeled; a concept central to taiga & his coterie. i’m staying away from applying a tinted tan-ish ground & working instead on the white quadruple primed linen. a magnificent surface.

a dear friend in nyc reminded me that, in sparse reflections, for example, a spare composition is more effective. so i’m paying attention to that feedback in itsu.

BELOW: left to right: minoo before todays revisions, after the revisions, and itsu as it looked at the end of the day today

installing the vent seals & starting studio reorg & cleanup /  by Philip Tarlow

ABOVE: before & after the studio reorg

6:34 PM: today a dear friend came over and sealed all 12 wall vents, which had been doing the reverse of what they were intended to do every winter, drawing in cold outside air and pulling out air that had been warmed by my in floor heating, resulting in astronomical propane bills every winter!

as long as he was at it, we rearranged book shelves & painitng tables, so that the studio already looks & feels a lot larger. we through out 2 large trash bages full of garbage. once it’s complete, this reorg will result in a new look & feel and make it a lot easier for me to access my materials & to view the painting i’m adjusting while sitting across the room at my imac.

preparing for vent seals tomorrow /  by Philip Tarlow

6:28 PM : a friend is scheduled to arrive in the studio today at 10:30 am. he’s going to seal the 12 vents in the south studio wall. they were created originally as part of a trombe wall , a passive solar building design on the winter sun side of a building which is supposed to capture the suns heat & transfer it, via the vents, to the interior of the building. well, in the early ‘90’s when the studio was built, the builders had the best of intentions, but didn’t get it right. instead of bring the heat of the sun into my studio. in reality, they made a big mistake and the wall does the exact opposite; drawing out warm air and bringing in the freezing cold we get in the winter months. as a result, our propane bill for the studio skyrockets every winter.

so this morning i began the process of clearing that south wall of all kinds of stuff: stretcher bars, books, magazines, brushes, etc. so that all 6 of the lower vents are accessable. a lot of work. mid afternoon, after she was done with her actionlab360 work at the house, mikela joined me & helped move stuff. once the vents are sealed i’m going to have to do a lot of reorganization & discard a lot of no-longer-needed materials. it’s an interruption to my work flow, but….must be done!

sparse reflections continued /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of sparse reflections

1:12 PM: i’m continuing work on sparse reflections, which is no longer as sparse. i worked on it for a few hours, knowing all the while that most of what i was doing would be wiped out towards the end of the day. and sure enough, just prior to my mentee k. arrived at 2, i wiped most of what i’d done out, leaving what you see BELOW.

returning to sparse reflections /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of sparse reflections after todays intervention; kind of a cool passage, no?

3:52 PM: sparse reflections was a bit too sparse. so, after gazing at it since i last worked on it, 5 days ago, and after waiting 3 days since my calf surgery, i decided to jump in. did i jump in too soon & delay healing of the wound? maybe. i’ll see when i take the bandage off tonight & see if there was any bleeding.

but back to the painting. after a full days work, it looks quite a bit different than the others, although obviously of the same family. i went into it with no real plan other than to create more coherence in what seemed to me to be an image without a center of focus. scattered. dispersed. confusing & unsettling to the eye.

so was i successful? yes & no. yes, if you look at the two below, in that todays version, on the right, does give the viewer somewhere to hang his/her hat. no in that, although there are a number of beautiful passeage, the painting’s identity is still not entirely clear. after 4 days of inactivity, my mind cut in when it shouldn’t have. and my legs began to ache, unused perhaps to standing on the cement floor for a good part of the day.

a taiga study in gouache on paper /  by Philip Tarlow

BELOW: on the left is an earlier iteration of the sound of a flute series, and on the right is the most recent one, illustrating the evolution of the work in the direction of simplicity & spareness.

3:15 PM: it’s best to stay off my feet, so instead of returning to the 78x26” taiga inspired oils, i sat at my work table and made a small gouache study of a taiga scroll. it was interesting to shift to a much smaller scale, and to gouache on paper. it was a good day and, that being said, i can’t wait to get back to the larger oils. i feel like i’m in the groove with that series; that my learning increases dramatically with each successive painting. i may take some of the recent completed ones back to the house, and switch them out with the earlier ones, which may be subject to tweaks in the direction of simplification. see the two examples ABOVE.

more work on "emerald ripples" /  by Philip Tarlow

1:11 PM: i’m supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible today following squamous surgery yesterday on my calf. the main reason is to allow healing to take place without stressing it out, and so that the stitches remain intact. i think i can go back tomorrow, taking frequent breaks & avoiding anything that might put too much pressure on my calf.

Before heading to Salida for the surgery on tuesday afternoon, i was able to do some work on emerald ripples. it seemed too spare. so, as you can see i added some rock shapes below & areas of pale pink/ochre & grey, which give more movement & coherence, giving new meaning to the delicate mountain marks on the upper third of this painting.

right now,i have such energy for making these paintings, i feel like i’d like to have a few dozen of these 78x26” canvases stretched & ready to paint. it’s certainly a possibility, but would requie lots of time & money. the artfix portrait linen, which comes in 84”x 5 or 10 yard rolls, is very costly, and stretching each one is time consuming. this long, narrow shaped canvas usually requires some re-stretching to deal with the inevitable wrinkles in the fine linen simply due to the shape, as opposed to a more square shape, where it’s easier to equalize the pressure as you pull the linen tight with the wide stretching pliars & fasten it with the staple gun.

back to work tomorrow? lets see. my ankle is still pretty swollen post-op, so as instructed, i’m lying down & keeping it above the level of my heart.

starting "emerald ripples" /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of emerald ripples at 3:30pm

emerald ripples 78x26” at 3:30pm today

3:11 PM: i needed to give sparse reflections a few days break before doing anything more, so i started a new one, titled emerald ripples. like sparse reflections, it’s painted on the white quadruple primed portrait linen, which actually has a slightly yellowish-greyish tint. as it turns out, this is a very good thing for the work i’m doing, making it possible to make marks that retain their sensitivity without jumping off the surface, which they would do if it were dead white. it’s also great timing for what’s going on with my vision. before the cataract surgery i wouldn’t have been able to discern these fine tonal variations, since i couldn’t perceive anything that was dead white!

i’ll have a short painting day tomorrow, as we have to drive to salida for minor surgery on a lesion on my calf which biopsied as squamous cell.

tweaks to "sparse reflections" /  by Philip Tarlow

12:04 PM: we walked up the creek at 6am & got up at 5:20am, so it was with some trepidation that i went back into sparse reflections. i started it yesterday and by the end of the day felt it may have been resolved. i was hesitant about disturbing the white space.

BELOW are before & after images. as you can see, a very pale blue has appeared in the upper portion of the painting, suggesting sky & clouds, as well as a pale pink in the middle areas. i think it works, and that it’s a better painting now. your eye assembles the discreet elements; the marks, more coherently whilst maintaining the painting’s mystery.