shinkei goes full on musical /  by Philip Tarlow

2:14 PM: today i’d say i’m 76% recovered from the fluzone high dose flu shot, especially formulated for those over 65. it definitely has a kick.

shinkei as it looked at the end of my painting day today.

so after putzing around for a few hours….actually I was taking care of some business, I began working again on that delicate shinkei painting, which I hadn’t dared to touch over the past few days. it’s emerging from it’s delicate shell & reminding one more of it’s sisters, thus far numbering 13, plus one that’s been painted over & is awaiting re-stretching, as it was on a warped stretcher bar.

todays palette mid day

mountains, waterfalls, trees & rocks are what they’re all about. they are all inspired by taiga & his 18th century scrolls. the title of the series: sound of a flute, or more fully, sound of a flute over water, (that was too long to use as the official title) says it all. it’s music, which taiga & his cohorts listened to live as they painted. it’s the color of music. and the marks are those a flute might make if it could jump out of the musicians mouth, dip itself in some colors & move across the surface.

shinkei continued /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of shinkei at 2 pm today

shinkei is delicate. I couldn’t have worked on it yesterday when, fresh from our super strong flu shots, I was reeling & my arm hurt.

it can’t be worked on unless i’m in the right flow. today I did do some work on it, switching off with other things that needed to be taken of. here’s how it looks at the end of my painting day.

reviewing "ano kato" series paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

today i mostly prepared for our tirp tomorrow. since i’ll be donating one of the ano kato series paintings to a museum, i went through the entire series and picked out the 22 paintings based on views from above in a number of museums in athens, greece, nyc & denver.

i didn’t remember there being so many paintings in this series that were inspired by photos i shot in museums over a period of a few years. perhaps moma is the most conducive, in that you get spectacular views looking down formmany different spots. the acropolis museum was special because it’s buily on ancient ruins, which are visible through the glass floor. the denver museum was special in that they’ve created an area especially designed for kids to draw & paint.

shinkei /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of shinkei at 3pm

3:04 PM: shinkei, or true view in japanese, is in it’s 3rd day of work. thus far, it retains the white ground & exhibibts a very light touch. that’s the mood i’m in. we’ll see if it carries into tomorrow and then, following our travels, into Sunday, when i’m back in my studio.

more work on a new "sound of a flute" series painting /  by Philip Tarlow

this morning i continued work on the as yet untitled 15th painting in my sound of a flute” series painting. i’m taking it slow. i had only a short period of time before my mentee k. came at 1pm.

this will very likely be the last painting in the series. i’m working on leads for showing them in japan, ideally in kyoto. taiga, the 18th c. japanese artist who is the inspiration for this seies, had a major retrospective at the kyoto museum last year. so this will be an exhibition of a contemporary american artist inspired by this japanese legend.

sparse reflections painted over /  by Philip Tarlow

sound of a flute series paintings on the east wall of my studio recently

sparse reflections painted over & flipped 180 degrees

1:43 PM: sparse reflections had become overloaded reflections, so I painted over it. yes, there were passages I was sorry to see go, but as a whole the composition was a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing. so it be gone!

now it looks more like sparse reflections. this one, like some of the others, had been stretched on what I later determined to be warped stretcher bars. so before I continue work on it and once it dries, I plan on re-stretching it on stretcher bars that are straight. that will likely be in 3-4 days. in the mean time, i’ve begun work on a new on, as yet untitled.

the image on the right was shot after painting over sparse reflections, and the canvas has been rotated so that what was previously the bottom of the composition is now on top.

sparse reflections revisions continue /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of sparse reflections at the end of my painting day

3:57 PM: following our Denver trip, I was able to get back to work on sparse reflections, which I last worked on this past tuesday. my work was interrupted by logistics that needed to be taken care of. sometimes these interruptions work in my favor, resulting in quick darts in & out. I get a hit, pick up an oil pastel crayon, for example, get deep into it, then have to stop to take a call or deal with the guy from the new propane company we’re using who came to switch out the tanks. at some point Mikela came over & gave me her always useful & spot on feedback. usually I take what she observes & turn it into a very loose roadmap of where I need to go next with a painting. what works, what needs an intervention.

BELOW left: the painting on october 29 and right: today at the end of my painting day

sparse reflections changes continue today /  by Philip Tarlow

sparse reflections as it looked at the end of my painting day today

DETAIL of sparse reflections with red figure

3:01 PM: I. had to put our crack of dawn departure for Denver tomorrow out of mind in order to get my groove. i’m obsessed with weather, & I know that driving conditions tomorrow morning will be challenging, with icy, snow packed roads for most of the drive, & blowing snow for at least the first few hours.

it was pretty easy to forget all that, however, once I got to work. sparse reflectoins got way too crowded yesterday, so I did a light paint-over & worked into that. waterfalls (bakufu) have been showing up in the most recent work, and today they became multiple waterfalls cascading down the composition. he rocks below were inspired by photos i’ve taken over time of our creeks, especially the ones I shot in late fall, where the rocks are encased in ice. there’s a hint of a seated figure dressed in red as a counterpoint to the red japanese letters in the upper left portion.

on the left is what the painting looked like yesterday; on the right, todays version.

returning to "sparse reflections" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:01 PM: the last time I worked on sparse reflections was august 11th. a lot has happened since then in the evolution of my sound of a flute series. I feel ok about many of the paintings I made at the start of the series. others, not so much. one of them is sparse reflections. here’s how it looked before I resumed work on it this morning (left and mid-way through my painting day today (middle).

my revisions will continue, but I believe that, already, a new aesthetic is visible.

4:28 PM: and below right is how the painting looks at the close of my painting day today. a different painting, really. I may need to simplify somewhat tomorrow.

changes to minoo and gashu /  by Philip Tarlow

4:54 PM: at the very end of the day, as the winds pick up & the snow & cold move towards us from the north, I made a few slight but significant changes to gashu. compare this image with the one below on the right, and you’ll see some white marks on the rocks at the bottom that weren’t there, as well as a few blue ones, and a bit more definition in the white of the waterfall.

1:10 pm: yesterday, after studying minoo for a few days following my last intervention on October 2, I felt that the central portion of the composition needed wore work. so I made the changes you see ABOVE in the comparative before (left) & after photos. I think the addition of the waterfall on the upper left helps focus the eye, as do the trees.

what’s your opinion?