il torrente: stage 10 / December 14, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

3:17 PM: il torrente entered it’s 10th stage of development today, with many marks, the majority of which, I predict, will disappear. and who would know better? stage 1 looked like this on November 21.somewhere under this web of new marks, that original, elegantly simple heart pounds.were it not for my painful, freshly injured knee & the tendonitis in my shoulder, I might well have gone over some of what you see here, resulting in a cleaner, simpler image. but that was not meant to be, so here it is.

on the right is a detail.

more work on il torrente / December 13, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of *il torrente* at the end of my painting day today

5:01 pm: today i continuedd work on il torrente, modifying the whites i added yesterday & continuing to be judicious about using my right arm so as not to aggrevate the tendonitis in my right shoulder.

as you can see, yesterdays whites, in the image on the left, have been scaled back & somewhat muted. i added some new images and modified others, allowing a story to begin to emerge; a story with it’s roots in 12th century china, being told through the brush of a 21st century colorado painter who was born in brooklyn.

returning to "Il Torrente" / December 12, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

4:48 PM: today i felt like i could no longer resist the strong urge to paint in oil on canvas once again, even though it’s only been 4 days since i last worked on it. so, gingerly, carefully, using my left arm whenever possible, i dove back in. and, as usual, it appears that i totally fucked up a beautifully delicate construct. maybe. we’ll see.

hoogeloon continued / December 11, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

2:49 PM: I brought hoogeloon over to the house & after gazing at it for 24 hours, brought it back to the studio for modifications. it needed simplification. i’ve run out of archival glue sticks & had to use neutral ph adhesive, which is in liquid form & can get messy. watercolor marks can be seen, in addition to the various collaged elements. i’ll boring it back over to the house soon & see how it holds up. BELOW: yesterdays version on the left, todays on the right.

4:30 PM:

while i liked the white shape on the upper left, which i kept seeing as an eagle in profile, the composition as a whole was a bit too obvious, even predictable.

my work today opened the space, allowing it to breathe, and introduced a more painterly element with the calligraphic brush strokes in blue watercolor on white. as a result, the forms and marks are more biomorphically suggestive. that yellow line, together with the green marks at the bottom allow this collage to finally sing; that unpredictable moment i always hope for but can never plan. hwile i sorely miss working big, i’ve always loved working small with collage on paper, where an entire section can morph by simply collaging a piece of white paper; a map; an old drawing fragment……

hoogeloon / December 10, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

*hoogeloon*, 14 x 17 1/2” collage & crayon on paper

2:56 PM: hoogeloon is a town in the netherlands, southwest of eindhoven. it can be seen if you click on the above image of the collage I made today.

i’m experiencing a lot of shoulder & neck pain as a result of the tendonitis recently diagnosed in my right shoulder, so I decided to work on smaller pieces, with the thought that it would put less strain on my shoulder.

I may continue working small like this until i’m feeling better.

k. comes to the studio / December 8, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

4 PM: my mentee, k., came to the studio this morning to continue work on his landscape. the first thing we did was a kind of test. since he plays cello, i played 2 versions of bach’s cello suite #1 ; one played by pablo casals, the other played by yo yo ma. within seconds of playing the casals version, he identfied the cellist, and then did the same with the yo yo ma version.

he brought a small, exquisite watercolor he had made of his cat. this is not just a good watercolor bya 13 year old; this is a masterful, moving work of art, regardless of the age of the artist.

he then proceeded to get back to work on the sky-scape he’s been working on over the last 3-4 visits. i was in the mood to start a small gouache painting on paper of k. painting. i’m considering making a slightly larger oil on linen based upon this study in gouache. there was a time, when i lived and painted in greece, that the human figure played a major role in my work. somehow, during our 25 years in crestone, i haven’t made any figure paintings at all. so this study in gouache is an important event. will it lead to more? quite possibly. it’s something i do well, and i’m in the mood. the trick would be to get the right subjects to make time to come and sit for 2-3 sessions. i have a few candidates in mind, so we’ll see.

il torrente: what a difference a little white makes/ 1st in a series of new gouache on paper paintings / December 7, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

5:51 PM: today, after making a few white marks on il torrente, i started the first of a new series of small painitngs in gouache on paper, which will continue for at least 2-3 weeks, or as long as it takes for the tendonitis in my right shoulder to begin healing. these small gouaches allow me to paint with minimal stress to my right shoulder.

DETAIL-*il torrente* after adding the whites

1:01 PM: after being away for 3 days, the first thing I noticed when I glanced at Iil torrent was that it needed some white marks the curves of the mountain shapes. although, following my shoulder MRI, I can’t really paint in a way that requires moving my arm & shoulder energetically, I was able to add the whites using oil stick & a bare minimum of right arm movement. so I think it will remain in this state for a few weeks while my tendonitis heals, and i’ll focus instead on small gouaches.

BELOW: il torrente as it looked before adding the whites; and on the right, afterwards

a bit more on il torrente / December 2, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

todudioay i had a lot to do in the studio that was logisitcal. calls, printing, stretching a friend’s paintings, which he got in morocco, and more.

i was able, nonetheless, to get in a few strokes, which included the first appearance of white in the composition.

BELOW: yesterdays version (left) & todays

Il torrente, continued / December 1, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

2:16 PM: i’ll flesh out this post when mikela & I return from our afternoon walk up to the stupa. briefly, I did more work on il torrente, which is unbelievably exciting to me. i’ll explain why when we’re back from our walk.

BELOW: yesterday:left, today: right

more work on shinkei and il torrente / November 30, 2019 by Philip Tarlow

3:52 PM: I started out the day making some important changes to shinkei. as you can see from the images BELOW, todays version, on the right, now has white highlights on the rocks below, some small but significant white marks in the center of the composition suggesting figures, more pink in the mountains above and a red seal in the lower right. as a result, there is more movement in the composition, as well as more mystery.

il torrente has gone through many phases, the most recent of which, masked by a tan over-painting, adds immeasurably to this latest over-painting. the imagery, in this current incarnation, derives from an anonymous 7th century cave painting in china. while going deeper with my research on the great 11th century Chinese painter li gonglin, I came across a treasure trove of images such as the ones below, from manuscripts in a cave in china created between the 5th-11th centuries.

i’ll continue work on il torrente tomorrow morning.