macro watercolor 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:54 PM: i started macro watercolor 3 today, but had some unavoidable interruptions, which is not the greatest thing when making a watercolor. so i stopped and will see if i can resume in the morning.

it could very well stand as a completed piece, so i’ll see how i feel about it tomorrow. we might go out walking as soon as mikela gets off her call, but it’s windy as hell & it might be better to wait till tomorrow.

actually in it’s present state, this one is much closer to the delicate balance possible with a watercolor than the previous two. as matisse once said:” ….i had forgotten all the little details and, in my pictures, retained only the striking and poetic side. until then i had been pursued by the love of exactness, which most people mistake for truth.”

macro watercolor 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:04 PM: i made the second in a new series of watercolors inspired by macro photos i shot while we were walking up the trail last summer. i’m using a 16 x 12” block of acid free, hot pressed watercolor paper, which is smooth….no grain at all.

using watercolor after all this time working in oil on linen is a refreshing change, requiring a very different mindset and use of the brush. every stroke counts, and there is a greater awareness of the negative spaces as the brush moves over the paper. even more so than with oil, you need to know when to stop.

macro watercolor 1 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:14 PM: this morning i made preparations for the first in the series i spoke of yesterday, based upon macro photos i shot on our creek walks last summer.

the watercolor started off well, but perhaps because i didn’t get a good sleep last night, i stumbled & became a bit unconscious when i got to the lower right portion. so i may decide to crop it tomorrow, as you see on the lower right, and just complete that portion of the watercolor. as you probably know, whatever you do in a watercolor can’t be changed.

self portrait in colored pencil /  by Philip Tarlow

3:06 PM: this morning, using a wood framed mirror i found in an abandoned stone house on the island of andros in about 1975, i made a self portrait in colored pencil.

this afternoon i transferred images i had shot with a macro lens this past summer on our creek walks from my phone to my imac. i’ll be using some of them for small paintings in gouache & watercolor on paper, starting perhaps as early as tomorrow.

if i appear to be swinging wildly between topics to paint, that’s because i am. you could call it my reaction to the covid-19 situation. right now i would have been preparing for my trip to greece april 11, which of course i cancelled. the situation in greece right now, as elsewhere in the world, is tragic. it may be that shifting my focus to this series of close up images of natural forms will serve to ground me and remind me of my passion for painting patterns,

forms, colors whether representational or otherwise.

sound of a flute collage /  by Philip Tarlow

4:47 PM: today i created a collage which is part of my sound of a flute series. it’s the first collage in the series and includes collaged elements, watercolor marks, colored pencil and oil pastel. the dimensions are 20 x 8.5 “

creek watercolor #1 /  by Philip Tarlow

2020 rocks and water watercolor, 14x17”

3:24 PM: i/we thought this hunkering down period was going to be a huge gift. but since it began 3-4 days ago, i haven’t been able to do any decent work, or very much work at all. i’ve been wandering around my studio like a lost soul, looking here & there for clues as to what i should/could be doing, yesterday i did such god-awful work on il torrente that i just deleted yesterdays blog post; something i’ve never done before.

so finally, after paying some bills and wandering around some more, i found two blocks of watercolor paper and started a watercolor of rocks & water.

a novel thing to paint, eh?

based upon the mood i’m in right now, i may just continue making rocks & water watercolors until the weather permits my first forays to paint plein air at the creek, which has never failed to put wind in my sails.

what got me going finally was the text of a book i have on cézanne’s watercolors. the descriptions were so graphic and beautifully written that it reminded me of the pleasure i take in making watercolors, which i haven’t done in a while. in my wanderings today i came across this 14x17” block of watercolor paper, with a nice smooth surface, just the way i like it. what was interesting to me about the cézanne text was his description of how his pencil marks and very light watercolor marks are interdependent, and how cézanne plays them off against one another in a unique way. that appeals tremendously to my sensibilities, and is how i’ve used watercolor going all the way back to my greek period plein air paintings.

the one you see on the right is not a perfect example of this pencil/watercolor technique, but it was handy, hanging as it does in our bedroom. it’s a 2005 watercolor of pithara, a waterfall in the hills of the cycladic island of andros, greece.

stretching a new canvas / stupa walk / looking back to 2005 /  by Philip Tarlow

8pm: in 2005 we travelled to greece to visit my son dimitri on the cycladic island of andros. while we were there i made the preparatory sketches for the painting you see BELOW, which was shown in my 2006 solo show in athens and is now in a private collection. the two women in th composition were friends of dimitri.

pithara, oil on linen, private collection, athens

6:35: today was a prep day. I stretched another 78x26” linen canvas . that size and shape make it very difficult to avoid wrinkles and ripples where the canvas has been stretched somewhat unevenly. A rectangular or square shape is much more conducive to creating an evenly stretched, smooth canvas. and you know how much i love a taut, flat surface to paint on!

that said, i plan on stretching another one tomorrow; the reason being that i want to have more of an option to play. focusing on one painting is ok. focus divided between 2 equal sized canvases, now that feels more like play right off the bat! i learned this on this canvas, now let me try it over here but with a different brush or different colors.

i do have a few ideas about where i’ll be heading next. and having this open ended covid-19 block of time in front of us feels like a huge gift. we do our work, mikela in the house & philip in his studio, then take our walk. and we feel gratitude every day.

BELOW left: cutting the canvas to 78x26” this morning/right: the creek as it looked this afternoon on our stupa walk

retrieving and organizing hundreds of creek photos for use in upcoming series and a few additions to sparse reflections /  by Philip Tarlow

3:41 PM: this afternoon i added to the lower portion of sparse reflections, ABOVE, adding a few rocks and water with reflections.

1:34 PM: this morning i decided to go back into hundreds of photos of the creek on my phone. i’m transferring them to my desktop and storing them in a folder for use in an upcoming series i have in mind. it hasn’t yet crystallized, but there is an extraordinary wealth of material here. BELOW are a couple of examples:

a new collage and 4 landscape paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

4pm: this afternoon i made a new collage, which you see here on the left.

11:59 AM: BELOW are 4 landscape paintings i made over the years. on the top row left: a painting in oil on linen painted in 2006 and shown in my 2006 solo show in athens. we see a sweeping view of the attic plain from pnika, a hill next to the acropolis, which can be seen on the right, with mt. lycabette in the background. in the foreground, in contrast, is an intimate view of people walking their dogs. on the right: a view of canyon de chelle national monument in apache county, arizona, in gouache on 2 large sheets of paper. and in the second row left: a view of paraporti, adjacent to the town of chora, andros, greece, in oil on linen. right: a view looking towards mt. blanca, known to native americans as sinaajini, in our san luis valley, gouache on 2 sheets of paper.

testing the brush, 39.5x15 cm/ 15 3/4 x 6".... art as play…. /  by Philip Tarlow

testing the brush, watercolor on paper

2:42 PM: today i’m preparing for a trip and i wasn’t able to focus on painting. i was printing something for mikela to use at one of the schools on our upcoming trip. she stoppped by to pick up the printouts on her way back to the house when she noticed this little painting on watercolor paper.“i love this!” she exclaimed. “don’t do anything to it; i love it just the way it is!”

so how this series of marks happened is that i was testing out a new brush given to me as a gift by a dear santa fe friend. i wanted to see what kinds of marks it would make using w&n watercolors that come in those in little pans.

i wasn’t in painting mode, so that part of my brain that wants to make a painting was dormant. i was in oh, what a beautiful brush; let’s see what it does mode.

the resulting marks and the composition they created are, you might say scribbles. yes, but they are my scribbles. they are what my hand does when it receives the green light from my brain to create my signature marks with no representational OR abstract intention. just marks. just play.

so i placed it on a table next to 2 plein air paintings; one in oil on linen; the other gouache on paper. testing the brush jumps out at you.

it stands out. and that is precisely because of what i said in the previous paragraph. just play, as it turns out, trumps painting (you would say this with flair, as you might say: acting! when you are making fun of an actor who is too obviously acting!)

so where do we go from here?

just play.

just play, DETAIL