2008 plein air gouaches found yesterday during post-flooding cleanup/back to the creek /  by Philip Tarlow

5:59 pm: this morning, before heading to the studio to continue our cleanup & organizing, i went up to the creek for the first time in a very long time. my plan is to make a series of plein air gouaches every morning & then continue or efforts at the studio until we get it where we want it.

i wasn’t able to stay more than an hour, after which it began to rain & i had to leave. here’s what i was able to do; both are incomplete, so i may work more on them next time i go up; possibly tomorrow morning.

during day 2 of yesterdays studio cleanup following the flood, we began organizing the many paintings in gouache on paper that had been in my flat files. although the file cabinet was directly under the water descending from my loft area, all but the bottom drawer were fully closed. as a result, there was minimal damage to these paiintings. a few were affected, and all were damp, but a real disaster was averted.

BELOW are two of the many plein air gouaches painted in 2008 which we discovered in my flat files:

flooding in my studio yesterday /  by Philip Tarlow

11:06 am: Yesterday, when I arrived at my studio to continue work on my “Sound of a Flute” series of paintings, I noticed water around the front door, pouring down from above the door. When I opened the door, there was standing water in the entire North portion of my studio, and bulging areas in the ceiling, where it was obvious that water was pooling. I immediately shut off the main water valve, and the rest I’ll talk about when I have time later today.

What you see on the right is a large oil discovered by the mitigation team, rolled up & wet on the bottom of a closet affected by the flooding. I lay it out to dry in the sun. It’s undated, & I have no memory of when I painted it....probably in the mid-90’s.

LATER:

fortunately, not many paintings were damaged. although my flat file cabinet was directly under the area of the ceiling where the water was descending

from the water heater in my loft, the water only entered the bottom drawer, which had been partially open. it didn’t contain important gouache paintings, but the ones it did contain were damaged.

my studio was due for a big re-org, so this served as my wakeup call. it will be at least 10-14 days before i can get back to work painting. mikela is over there right now, sifting through stuff & preparing for when the mitigation team of 3 arrive around 1pm. before they left yesterday, they set up fans, dehumdifiers &, in the bathroom, a heater which will drive the temperature in there up to 100F.

what i can do while i’m waiting for the moment i can continue work on my sound of a flute series, is stretch 6 new 78x26” canvasses intended for the series, unstretch a bunch of painitngs that don’t make it as 10’s & venture out to the creek to make some plein air gouaches & oils, which i’ve been waiting to do since the mosquito season ended about 10 days ago.

BELOW: a tour of the scene in my studio yesterday & today. the 3 members of the mitigation team, out of salida, colorado, are true professionals who work swiftly & with certainty. their work will continue for about another week, until there’s no dampness left in the ceiling & walls. the dehumifiers & heaters they placed will be operating non stop throughout this period. so far they have carted away 2 full truck loads of stuff that was irreparably damaged or simply no longer needed.

once it’s all over, I will have a much cleaner & less cluttered studio. thanks in a large part to mikela’s organizing skills, everything will have it’s place: tools; brushes; paints; stretcher bars; paper; canvas; etc. my challenge is to keep it that way. that does not come naturally to me, so i just have to remain vigilant & immedialy throw stuff away that is no longer needed, and put stuff back where it belongs when i’m done with it.

in the end, this disaster will actually benefit me tremendously. right now, after a day of sorting, moving stuff & clumping paintings, tools and materials all day, we’re exhausted. at least, starting tomorrow, our 4 day streak of record breaking heat will begin to subside, with cooler temps & thunderstorms predicted for the weekend.

greater simplification of gashu /  by Philip Tarlow

5:04 PM: today i made deep changes to gashu. as has been happening with greater & greater regularity, it felt way too busy when i gazed at it in comparison with the others.

i went over it with a warm reddish tan color & worked into it, leaving just one shape in the center revealing the white linen beneath.

ghost images underneath the upper portions give a sense of mountains without spelling them out.

i also did some valuable research on taiga & his times, which made me want to make a small book which tells the story of how i arrived at this point of less-is-moreness & how that relates to the history of art including but not limited to taiga & his buddies.

i’ve already begun gathering material, & will try to do a bit each morning over matcha tea & toast.

BELOW: gashu before & after todays work.

changes to gashu & seventh month /  by Philip Tarlow

4:05 PM: today is the first time, following my fall last sunday, that i feel the enrgy to paint. i was afraid i’d never paint again. my body felt so sore & my perceptions so skewed, that i found it impossible to remember that surge of energy that happens when i’m gearing up to paint.

i brought seventh month back from the house, where it had been hanging at the top of our stairs. the more i studied it, the more i felt it wasn’t working. i went over the entire surface with titanium buff, which is a tan-ish color, and then proceeded to paint into it. all the while, mikela was working on organizing the studio, which allowed me to avoid the pitfall of letting my mind dictate the process, rather than my gut. BELOW: on the left, seventh month before todays intervention, right: after.

next,i moved on to my most recent painting in this series: gashu. it definitely has some cool passages, but doesn’t completely hang together; not surprising for a one-off painting. now this one is definitely still in process. but right off the bat, there is greater coherence. it’s late, i’m very tired…more tomorrow.

sore /  by Philip Tarlow

4:37 pm: i didn’t paint today. too sore. that’s a very steep ravine, & when i stumbled on some loose rocks & began tumbling down, i knew i had to just relax into it. that probably saved me from much worse injuries. but i’m sore. too sore to even think of painting. maybe tomorrow?

kind of a wake up call, really. i’ve often contemplated what would likely happen if i tripped & fell into the ravine, the same ravine, just a few hundred feet down the trail. a sheer thousand foot drop down to the creek, broken only by large boulders. certain death. would i still be relaxing into it, as long as i was conscious? i’d like to think, yes.

the soreness doesn’t kick in till the next day, so i actually painted gashu, seen here on the right, just a few hours after my fall.

so today i did some paper work. all the while i cast glances at gashu. is it too strong? does the bottom quarter need work. like the top. probably won’t touch that. yeah, if i can paint tomorrow, i might go there.

all out of 78x26 stretcher bars, so i’m gonna have to wait a week before i start another one. and just how long is this sound of a flute kick gonna last, anyway? can’t go on forever. right now, i still got the jiuce.

starting gashu / tumbling down a ravine this morning /  by Philip Tarlow

gashu, 78x26” at the end of my painting day

at work today on the new gashu, 78x26”.

3:31 PM: well, it was probably inevitable that, on one of our morning trail walks, i would take a spill. as we were descending, my boot caught on a loose rock & i went over the edge. fortunatly, it wasn’t one of those spots where it’s a sheer 1,000 ft. drop, with large pointy boulders en route, or i would be dead. so i tumbled maybe 20 feet down the steep, rocky ravine before wedging between two large rocks. i banged myself up & got a few cuts, one of them under the bandage you see on my lower left leg. although shaken, i was able to start this new painting, titled gashu.

it has bolder marks & colors than the last one, and a spot of red on the rider’s shirt. as usual, i’ll see how i feel about it in the morning. right now, i’m feeling proud of myself for getting some work done, but increasingly sore from my fall.

DETAIL of gashu, day one.

so, once i complete this post, i’ll join mikela, who is also zonkered, rest & have dinner & beer. the new santa fe beers are better than expected.

on the way home after our trail walk, we saw a guy at the kiosk with a little covered stand & a sign that said bagels. we stopped to find out if they are locally made and, by god, they are! bread too! i had half a toasted bagel for breakfast & it was really quite good. we’ll let our crestone friends know, & will ourselves become loyal customers. he’ll be there every friday, saturday & sunday 7-10am.

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!