kwazu no shosa /  by Philip Tarlow

2:45 PM: kwazu no shosa was again painted over, this time with a warm white. I then scraped into it with a flexible matt knife, which I normally use to mix oil colors. it made marks that were new to me, so I just went with it.

the reason it’s photographed lying horizontally is that, although drips normally don’t bother me, I didn’t want the freshly applied oil paint to drip. so tomorrow morning when come back in, it will be dry enough to hang on the wall & photograph properly.

but the first thing I did this morning was to make the drawing for a painting in gouache on paper of an owl, for a friend who is about to go on a 2 month trip. he loves owls, so he should appreciate this.

i’ll probably make the gouache tomorrow morning, although I never know what’s on the menu until I arrive.

kwazu no shosa morphs again /  by Philip Tarlow

kwazu no shosa as it looked at the end of my painting day

4:07 PM: I was able to get more done this afternoon, introducing a few areas of foliage into the composition and muting the area of red in the central portion of the composition. but it doesn’t yet feel resolved, so I may resume work in the morning, although it’s unlikely i’ll make radical changes, as has been happening the past few days.

2:29PM: this morning I had a bunch of logistics to take care of. I finally got started around 1 & have been painting since then, taking this short break to post my progress & gaze at what i’ve done thus far. I won’t say much more right now; here’s kwazu no shosa as it looked on the easel moments ago. I put it on the easel, but have been working on it lying flat on a couple of saw horses.

you will notice far bolder colors than i’ve been using in the rest of this series.

kwazu no shosa, continued /  by Philip Tarlow

kwazu no shosa at the end of my painting day today

4:26 PM: Michael is still working on the new heater installation, so it smells strongly of a glue he’s using, and I hear the sound of his various tools up in my loft area. I didn’t think i’d get any painting done today because of that and the fact that I didn’t get a great nights sleep. but the juices unexpectedly kicked in about 3 pm & I went back into kwazu no shosa with gusto and a feeling of excitement that this one differs significantly from the others that came before it, while maintaining & advancing the sprit of the series.

I love when the freedom and calligraphic melody of the marks resulting in unplanned imagery, often biomorphic. there’s a seals head, a guy with a very big nose turning his head in wonderment or despair…it reminds me a lot of how I respond to some of archile gorky’s richest imagery: a flimflam of interrelated marks summarizing our collective experience of leaves, branches, butterfly wings and tree trunks swaying in a strong wind. and so taiga has moved me. opened doors for me. given me access to a language he & his wife & buddies dreamed up as regimes came crashing down and they ascended to their mountain retreat to listen to the sounds of a flute over water.

continuing work on the new kwazu no shosa, tweaks to emerald ripples & sound of a flute over water II /  by Philip Tarlow

3:59 pm: today i went back into kwazu no shosa, which i had painted over with a tan oil color 2 days ago. i painted a version of an 18th c. japanese poem on a scroll. this was then scraped over, and the shadow of my hand & arm, which showed up on the canvas due to a strong light from behind, was added with blue oil pastel. I how it looks right now, but michael arrived to continue installation of the new heater just when my strong morning energy was waning,

so I left it that way until tomorrow & made some small tweaks to the 2 paintings I mention in the title of todays post. emerald ripples needed something in the upper central portion, where the white space was too large, as you will see if you look at the painting before my tweaks, BELOW left. on the right you can see the painting post-tweaks. it works now.

sound of a flute over water II, which is a commissioned version of the original, needed some work in the upper central portion of the canvas, in the 3 areas of green leafage. as I gaze at it from a distance of about 20 feet, it looks to be resolved. before tweaks, BELOW left; after tweaks on the right.

new stretcher bar storage/kwazu no shosa was painted over yesterday/minor adjustments today to "sound of a flute over water II" & "meiji" /  by Philip Tarlow

4:57 PM: this morning I assembled this new storage rack for my stretcher bars. it’s already making a huge difference; they’re all sorted by size, which will make them far easier to locate when I want to stretch a new canvas. more importantly, it allows me to see what i’ve got & not order new stretcher bars I don’t need.

mid-afternoon michael came over to begin installing the new water heater, just in time for an abrupt drop in temperature predicted for thursday, with a possibility for snow thursday night.

I didn’t think i’d get any painting done with all this going on, but towards the end of the day, I did make some small but important changes to Meiji & sound of a flute over water II, which you can see below. meiji is on the left; sound of a flute over water II on the right.

day 2, kwazu no shosa /  by Philip Tarlow

4:14 PM: today I did lots of work on kwazu no shosa, which I started yesterday. nothing can compare with a big white canvas. at the back of my mind was the desire to maintain some of that virgin white of the quadruple primed linen, and not apply the tan ground i’ve used on many of the others in the series.

the work today took many twists & turns I didn’t stop until just about 1/2 hour ago. for some of todays work I lay the canvas horizontally on 2 sawhorses. the rest of the time it was on the easel. the Japanese inspired calligraphy I started with yesterday still peeks through in spots. I love allowing the story of the process of a painting to be transparent for the viewer to unravel. I love the complexity of it, but I have to be careful that the story doesn’t co-opt the composition as a whole. ideally, there’s delicate balance struck, and the viewer is drawn in, becoming him or herself a participant in the creation of the story; making it their own.

BELOW left: the painting on day 1; right: today

starting work on kwazu no shosa /  by Philip Tarlow

1:30 PM: kwazu no shosa translates as the reach of the frog, and is a verse form a poem by shiteki (d.1779). he was a priest who was a famous writer of “crazy” or “mad” poems. this particular verse refers to taiga’s depiction of a frog jumping toward a willow branch. this refers to a famous anecdote about ono no tōfu (michikazi, 864-966), one of the greatest calligraphers of the 10th c.. the story tells how ono no tōfu realized the importance of effort when he saw a small frog jumping again and again to reach a willow branch moving in the breeze. it was then that he began to concentrate on calligraphy.*

this is day one of the new painting which, like the others, ison a stretched 78x26”piece of quadruple primed linen.

*quote from Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran by Felice Fischer with Kyoko Kinoshita

a gaze painting in poreia theatre, Athens /  by Philip Tarlow

2:59 PM: this is one of my gaze series paintings: gaze 36, which hangs in the lobby of my son dimitri’s poreia theatre in athens, greece.

the series was painted in 2014 and consists of 26 works, all of which are in mixed media on linen with collage.

you can view the series by clicking on the works dropdown menu, then choosing gaze. or, copy & paste the link below

https://www.philiptarlow.com/gaze

sound of a flute over water ii, continued /minoo revisited /  by Philip Tarlow

4:09 pm: I shifted gears at around 2, and began doing what I said I might do yesterday: working on 2 paintings, switching back & forth between the two 7 allowing discoveries I made in one spill over to the other, back & forth until both reached what I think is resolution. BELOW: sound of a flute over water II at noon, left & & at the end of my painting day, right.

4:23 PM: and BELOW: minoo, before & after the changes. most of what I focused on is in the upper third of the composition, painting out the passage on the left & re-working the sky & mountains on top.

1:32 PM: Mikela had to leave early to attend a seminar in salad. so I got to work early and made some changes to sound of a flute over water II. the rocks on the bottom are bolder; there are more areas of green; and a cave with 4 little faces has been added on the right. I had said I would simplify today, so thus far there is more complexity. however because of the bolder marks defining the tree trunk in the center & the rocks below, the eye is given more of a sense where to travel. and now, back to work!

sound of a flute over water II, continued /  by Philip Tarlow

4:22 PM:we walked up the creek this morning & got back late. so I didn’t start painting till after noon, and just now stopped. I did a fair amount to this painting…maybe too much there are definitely some passages that have improved. as I look at it from about 25 feet, it does seem a bit congested. may need more breathing space. see what you think.

I think it will be helpful tomorrow to do what I suggested yesterday in my post: to start working on a different painting, either a revision of an already completed one or a new one, all the while glancing at this one until that moment when I am guided what to do. then I stop work on the new one, steal over to this one & make a gut intervention, which I swhat now needs to happen.