continued work on "sound of a flute over water II" /  by Philip Tarlow

3:32 PM: I was able to get an earlier start today & continued work on sound of a flute over water II. while it has the spirit of sound of a flute over water I, it definitely has an identity of its own. for starters, it has a pinkish overall hue, whereas the earlier version slants towards yellow tones. and the rock formations at the bottom are different, but no less spontaneous & engaging. BELOW left & right: I & II.

i’ll determine tomorrow whether further work is needed. in the mean time, while casting glances at minoo as I worked today, I saw a few things I would simplify, possibly tomorrow. I always love working on more than one painting at a time, which allows me to more easily let go of any attachments i’ve formed to passages that may not serve the whole composition.

back to work on "sound of a flute over water II" /  by Philip Tarlow

at work this morning on sound of a flute II

sound of a flute over water II at the end of my painting day today

4:01 PM: today, after messing around for a few hours & working up to being able to squeeze some colors & get back to work, I continued the commission i’m working on. it’s a variation on sound of a flute over water, which you can see if you go to the sound of a flute dropdown menu.

I can’t yet say i’m fully into my groove. close.

bold, unexpected moves happen when i’m in that space, which it’s easy to take for granted. it’s also new & unusual for me to be making a painting that’s a variation on one i’ve already completed. you could see that as a constraint. i’m experiencing it as a kind of refreshing challenge.

I didn’t get much sleep last night, and we walked up the trail this morning. as a result I was late arriving at the studio. i’m expecting to get a much earlier start tomorrow, and that makes a big difference.

k. complete's his latest landscape /  by Philip Tarlow

4:22 PM: today is my first day back in the studio following our week long trip to edwards to work with 3 schools there & introduce them to actionlab360.

we were both exhausted last night following a very long day. mikela attended a conference and I completed packing up our study, including lots of costco food shopping & loaded it into the car. on the trip back we witnessed some especially beautiful skies as we entered the san luis valley & headed home.

k., the student i’ve been mentoring for over a year, arrived at 2 to complete work on his latest landscape. each one is getting progressively better, and this is, I believe, his best to dat. bear in mind, he had never worked in oil previous to his mentorship with me.

I think you will agree, this is exceptional work. he’ll be here again next weekend, & we’ll see what’s next.

in the mean time, I hope to be able to resume work on my sound of a flute series tomorrow. the studio still needs lots of work, but I think it’s organized enough for me to resume painting, if I can get my groove. a new water heater arrived yesterday & will be installed sometime in the next few week, in Tim for the colder weather.

more drawings done at h&h in edwards /  by Philip Tarlow

4 drawings made over the past few days in edwards

7:39 am: we’ve been in edwards since monday, and during that time we’ve been to our favorite hangout, h&h, where i love to make drawings. BELOW: photos of h&h.

2:21 pm: and this morning we were introducing actionlab360 to a class at an edwards high school, where i made another drawing of one of the students. tomorrow before driving home, mikela will be in a seminar while i pack up & then spend more time drawing in h&h. back in my studio saturday, where i’ll resume work on sound of a flute over water II.

getting to work on "sound of a flute over water II" /  by Philip Tarlow

BELOW: 2 drawings made at h&h in edwards

2:55 PM: I thought i’d be getting back to work yesterday, 2 1/2 weeks after the flooding in my studio. as it turns out, today was the day.

at work this morning on sound of a flute II

sound of a flute over water II is a commissioned version of the painting with the same title, minus the II, which is now in a private collection in Santa Fe, nm.

of course it’s not possible to recreate an exact replica of the earlier version, nor would I want to. as a result, this feels like just as much an adventure into the unknown as the others in this series did when I was painting them.

i’m stopping here for the day, and likely won’t continue work till we return from edwards, where we’ll be engaged with the teachers & students at the middle school we’ve been working with for 3-4 years, piloting our educational product, actionlab360.

stay tuned, however, as i’ll likely be posting from our favorite edwards restaurant/coffee shop, where I love making drawings of the clients sipping coffe, having conversations &, sometimes, just gazing, deep in thought.

ABOVE: a couple of recent drawings made at h&h in edwards

finally! stretching a canvas for "sound of a flute over the water II" /  by Philip Tarlow

4:07 pm: we finally got my studio to the point, following the flooding last Wednesday, of being able to actually get back to work. I didn’t do any painting today, but I did stretch a 78 x 26” canvas for a commissioned version of sound of a flute over the water II.

I should be able to start work on this one tomorrow, and will, as usual post comments & pics of my process. this is my first post using my new iMac, which replaces one that was 10 years old. the difference is simply stunning! So much faster, and the screen is so bright, the colors so accurate!

tracing back my passion for taiga /  by Philip Tarlow

1:04 PM this is an email i put together for some friends, one of whom is an american painter living in japan, who not been aware of taiga. it was an opportunity for me to examine my decade long interest in the 18th c. japanese painter.

Ike Taiga had an exhibition last year at the Kyoto Museum, which was reviewed in the Japan Times:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/04/24/arts/ike-no-taiga-true-view-travel-painter/#.XXwUhK3MxE4

I’ve been studying his work, without of course being able to see the work in person, for about a decade.I started by making small studies based on the illustrations in one of my 2 books about him & Gyokuran, in gouache on paper.

Along the way, I was working on a series of oils titled Motion; studio versions, in mixed media, of plein air paintings in gouache on paper, made at a local creek over the past 20+ years. Then one day, I launched into this current series: Sound of a Flute. This title is from a translation of a verse in one Taiga’s buddies’ poems,which found its way onto one of his scrolls. The complete verse is: sound of a flute over water, which is exactly the sound Taiga was hearing as he painted at a mountain retreat.

I love that he, his poet friends & musician friends hung out. In stressful times, as often occured just following regieme change, they would go to their mountain retreat & the musicians would play as the poets wrote & Taiga painted. And drank lots of wine.

If you have time to look at my Stories page: https://www.philiptarlow.com/chatty-bio, you’ll see that my trajectory includes 15 unbroken years in Greece, where I married & had a son. I speak fluent Greek. I love languages…the sound, the music. I wish I could learn Japanese. In my studio, I often listen to YouTube videos in some obscure indigenous tongue, just to enjoy the music of it. During that Greek period, my mentor/teacher/friend was the great painter:Tsarouchis. When I sent a book of his work to my old friend Henry Geldzahler, at the time curator of 20th Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, he responded: Tsarouchis is a major 20th Century artist. We’d like to offer him an exhibition at the (then brand new) PS 1 in Queens. Tsarouchis, busy at the time executing commissions to pay for his newly built neo-classical home & studio in a suburb of Athens, politely declined.

He, I believe, would have understood & supported my strong attraction to Taiga.

Taiga brings together the strands of my history of mark-making. Working on the Sound of a Flute series is already having a noticeable imapct on my plein air gouaches, allowing me to see the trees, rocks & water with new eyes. On the left: one of my 78x26” Sound of a Flute paintings. In the center, a plein air gouache i made a few days ago, which clearly shows the influence of the Sound of a Flute series. On the right: a plein air gouache made before I embarked on my sound of a flute series of oils.

My Big Dream is to show the Sound of a Flute series in Japan. And to give a few illustrated talks on how & why a contemporary American painter came to be so engaged with his work and, after almost 2 centuries, finds it painterly; timeless; relevant.

2 more of the paintings we discovered post-flood /  by Philip Tarlow

here are 2 more paintings discovered & filed during post-flood cleanup. one the left, pithara, in gouache on paper, 23 1/4 x 7 1/4” painted in august, 2007 during a trip to andros. pithara is a waterfall located in the mountains, on the island of andros, a 10 minute walk from the village of apoikia. on the right, a 12x8 1/2” collage which is undated & unsigned. it was likely made in 2014, when i was doing lots of work in collage. another clue about the date it was made are the bits of maps included in the composition. i used maps extensively in the collages of that period. however most of them were abstract. unless we disscover more faces, i think this may be the only one.

2 new plein air gouaches / more gouaches discovered during studio cleanup /  by Philip Tarlow

5:35 PM: i ventured back out to the creek at about noon today. i went further up the trail & found a spot in the shade, where i could set uo my little table & 3 legged stool, & spread out my palette, brushes, water & tubes of gouache colors.

i started painting on a 13x15” arches paper surface that was prepared years ago & turned up during our cleanup, with a light tan ground. as with all my plein air gouaches, the brush strokes happen swiftly & with certainty. slow & cautious doesn’t work. i let the creek direct my mood & the movements of my arm & hand. if i’m especially on, the result is one of my 10’s. obviously, i can’t allow this awareness into my consciousness in that moment. so the process is most accurately described as a meditation. just as, during a meditation, you repeat the mantra & then allow it to disolve, the same process is in play during a session of plein air painting.

when the sun found me, i had to wrap it up & move all my materials about 10 yards, to another spot in the shade. stay cool & just do it.

next, i took a smaller surface, this one with an uncharacteristic reddisg undercoat, applied years ago in a way that left visible brush marks. normally i wouldn’t paint on such an aggressively red surface. finding it buried in a pile of prepared surfaces during our cleanup yesterday turned me on, so i took it with me. still not sure eabout the outcome.

BELOW: 3 of the gouaches we found while cleaning up after the flood in my studio. on the right is a small painting of david hockney photographing his dog, painted in 1994.

back out to the creek this morning /  by Philip Tarlow

i got somewhat of a late start, but who cares? i was not quite myself, having skipped my morning meditation in order to get out to the creek before the predicted afternoon thunderstorms. i went to the same spot as yesterday and continued work on the same 2 gouaches.

going out to paint at the creek never gets old. today, as has happened in the past, i made a wrong move & kicked my little lightweight painting table, my palette & 2 fan brushes into the creek. i retreived them all, none the worse for the bath. i wouldn’t say i was in top form. i’ll likely go back out tomorrow morning & start one or two new ones. clearly, some of what i’ve learned doing my sound of a flute series of oils is making it’s way into these gouaches.