a self portrait in watercolor / starting watercolor 12 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:32 PM: i stopped for the day. didn’t sleep well last night, so i burnt out about half hour ago. BELOW: watercolor 12 at 1 pm and 2:30pm

stage 1, watercolor 12, 11 x 12”/ 38x48 cm.

1 PM: starting watercolor 12 moments ago

theatre-libre program design, vuillard, 1890

12:20 PM: starting a bit late today. i was reading the large vuillard catalogue and found many connections with his marks. more about this later. made a quick self portrait with hat in watercolor, using my friend lea’s gift of a japanese brush, and am on to watercolor 12. pics when available, as always!

continued work on watercolor 11 / what am i reading currently? /  by Philip Tarlow

3:06 PM: just comnpleted work in my studio for the day, and about to take our now daily walk up the creek. i changed the drop-down menus on the site, and this is the new header for the 2020 watercolors page:

the completed watercolor 11

DETAIL

2:23 PM: the completed watercolor 11. some of the white bubbles in the lower portion needed to become larger, both for compositional reasons and to reflect the magic i felt when i saw those bubbles in real life a few afternoons ago. compositionally, they transition the white dots in the water surrounding the rocks to dancing musical accents akin to pregnant pauses in thelonious monk’s riffs.

12:29 PM update: at work moments ago on watercolor 11

11:02 AM: i’m about to continue work on watercolor 11, which i started yesterday. it’s one of those paintings that could stop anywhere, but i choose to take it further and we’ll see where it goes.

READING:

i’m currently reading two books. one, a biography of my friend, teacher & mentor the late yannis

tsarouchis, was published in 1993 has has been sitting in my bookshelf since then. i opened it this morning and found it compelling enough to continue, and have it be my breakfast reading for the next little while. it was written by alexis savakis, and includes a photo of myself, tsarouchis and sammuel beckett standing together on the roof of tsarouchis studio in maroussi. our mutual friend, actress christina tsingou had invited beckett to come to athens & visit tsarouchis’ studio in maroussi. i was asked to pick beckett up at the athens airport & drive him to maroussi, which i did, thus getting to spend a few hours with the great playwright. i was also asked to photograph beckett’s visit, as he did not ever want to be photographed by professional photographers or reporters.

the other book i’ve started reading is hommage to catalonia, by george orwell. it’s considered by some to be his best piece of writing, surpassing his best known book: animal farm. having only read 10 pages or so, i would agree with this assessment. these days it takes a lot to keep me staying focused on a book without skimming and skipping around. not this one. orwell is concise, precise, compassionate and often funny in his own british style of humor. i would highly recommend it. i originally bought it to send to my grandscon philip in athens, but decided it would be best to read it myself first, to make sure it’s suitable for a 14 year old.

more later in the day my dearest friends!

starting watercolor 11 / a look back at '90's paintings on ceramics /  by Philip Tarlow

3:24 PM: i started watercolor 11, which is about half way there and filled with the little white bubbles we saw yesterday on our walk. today is cloudy & windy, but we’re going anyway, in about 20 minutes. so i’ll continue this post when we’re back.

12:10 PM: as i print out images i like in preparation for watercolor 11, i opened a folder on my desktop and discovered some ceramics i had painted on in the ‘90’s, on the island of palm beach, where we lived at the time on jamaica lane.

the ceramics were made by my friend joseph, who would bring them over to our house in the back of his pickup.

in a few of them, i was already playing around with wavy water patterns that have shown up lately in my creek inspired watercolors. all exhibit a strong interest in patterns.

more a bit later in the afternoon, once i get started on watercolor 11.

i’m also contemplating starting work on a book i’ve been pondering for years. what could be a more perfect time than this, our hunkering down phase?

r's landscape / watercolor 10 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:26 PM: done painting for the day and it’s time for our trail walk. here’s the current state of the watercolor, to be continued tomorrow. it’s a new experience, working on a watercolor over a period of days. usually it’s a one shot deal. always when i’m painting plein air, which will start happening within a week or two.

while posting this, by the way, i’ve been going back and forth with my son dimitri about the state of modern theatre, also to be continued tomorrow.

stage 1, watercolor 10

2:41 PM: watercolor 10: here is stage 1 of the new watercolor 10, once again inspired by photos i’ve shot recently during our creek walks. i’m learning quickly as i make these new watercolors; recalling what i already had learned over decades of making watercolors, and learning new ways of using the medium, especially since re-discovering the arches paper i’m now using.

r’s landscape, 36x60”, oil on linen

8:04 AM: i’ve been mentoring a 17 year old in carbondale, colorado who was commissioned by a recovery facility to create a 36x60” landscape painting for the interior of their building. she has surpassed my expectations in the creation of this painting, which is still in process.

yesterdays trail walk this morning’s self portraits / 4 watercolors on my wall /  by Philip Tarlow

4 watercolors from my new series

2:36 PM: i completed watercolor 9 and put 4 of them on my studio wall (ABOVE) for evaluation and to see how they might look in an exhibition.

9:29 AM: todays self portrait in colored pencil on paper, 8x6” this represents a continuation of the daily self portraits my grandson philip & i are making. philip’s, on the right was sent to me yesterday, and he says it’s not yet completed. i’ll post the completed version as soon as he sends it to me.

9 AM: yesterday afternoon was windy and overcast. but we did take our new afternoon walk up cottonwood trail. he are some pics of what we encountered:

revisions to "10th month" / looking back at a 2019 collage / watercolor 9 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:19 PM: after completing the changes to 10th month (below) i started watercolor 9. i’m going to leave it in this state until tomorrow morning, when i’lll decide whether or not to take it further. i need to be fresh to work on these watercolors, or i end up doing too much. the detail, below, could easily stand alone as a completed work, don’t you think?

i do like the option, which is especially strong when using watercolor, to suggest forms without having to completely fill them in. of course the same can be done using other mediums, but watercolor is especially suited to it.

i may decide to use a few of the photos i shot on our walk yesterday, four of which i’ve posted below, for future watercolors.now that i’m working on this one, when i look at those photos my eye suntracts the non essential elements and i can feel my hand and arm dancing over the surface of the watercolor paper.

1 PM: yesterday afternoon we departed from our usual walk up to the stupa and instead walked up cottonwood creek trail. it was exquisite, and we’re going again this afternoon. here are some pics:

12:13 PM: this morning i made some small but important revisions to 10th month, which is part of my sound of a flute series. the greens were too light and needed some darkening, which are the only changes i made. on the right are shots of the before and after.

i also photographed this small, 22 1/2 x 8 3/4” collage, which had been sitting on one of my tables since i completed it, and this morning when i looked at it i had a new appreciation for it’s qualities. it too is part of the sound of a flute series, all of which are inspired by the great 18th century master calligrapher and landscape painter, taiga.

and now, on to my next watercolor in the new series, all based upon photos shot at the creek last summer.

i’ll post photos of the work i did today later in the day.

morning pre-studio photos /  by Philip Tarlow

3:17 PM: so this morning i completed watercolor 8. it has retained it’s suggestive white spaces while gaining just enough complexity to satisfy the eye and create movement.

the dominant orange/red and grays dance.

while having breakfast, i read a review in art forum by nasser rabbat, of “ancient nubia now,” an exhibition currently on at the museum of fine arts in boston. in referring to the fact that the pieces in this exhibition were essentially stolen from nubia, he points out the need to”fully face the colonial (and racist) foundations of art history…” rabbat also brings up an interesting point, namely that “greek ancient culture had significant afro-asiatic roots”, a point made by bernal in his controversial 1987 book, black athena. in short, i learned a lot, and not just about ancient nubian art.

BELOW: a few details from watercolor 8

9:33 am: still haven’t taken my shower yet, but i did make a self portrait drawing for my daily exchange of self portraits with my grandson philip and shot a few photos here in the house:

watercolor self portrait / watercolor 8 stage 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:19 PM: i took watercolor 8 to the next stage, working very slowly so that i could maintain the delicate balance of forms & colors, continuing to enjoy the arches paper.

this one is walking the line between abstraction of representation. i’d like to maintain the negative spaces throughout the process.

DETAIL

1:37 PM: my grandson philip & i have agreed to exchange self portraits daily for a week. this is #2; i’m waitingh to receive his. now on to the watercolor i started yesterday. more later in the afternoon.

3:25 PM: as i worked on watercolor 8, i cast glances at the self portrait and found a problem with the eyes being too close together and the nose looking fatter then it actually is. so i made corrections, removed the image i had posted earlier and replaced it with the one you see.

watercolor 8 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:06 PM: today i embarked on a slightly different journey. i decided to see what would happen if i made watercolors on different types of watercolor paper, since i wasn’t totally satisfied with the results i was getting using the block of portofino paper. so today i tried using a sheet of arches 140 lb. cold press paper, which is heavier than the portofino and has a bit of a grain, although minimal. so far, i’m liking the result. the colors have more vibrancy and are seeming to delight in being applied to this heavier paper, which by the way is also slightly tinted and not dead white. as a result, when i leave the paper to show through, it looks less like a hole and more like an intentional part of the composition, which it is!

i removed the word macro in the title, since this one is not based upon a photo shot with a macro lens.

BELOW: stage 1, left and stage 2, right. to be continued tomorrow.

macro watercolor 7 /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL

6:04 PM: it seems i haven’t yet had enough of this image. this is the third variation of this image, which is a detail of a tree trunk i photographed last summer. the photo is, of course vertical. but it works better compositionally as a horizontal., which removes it one step from the realm of the representational. as a result, it can be appreciated more easily as a harmony of biomorphic shapes that may bring to mind animal and or plant forms. as i gaze at it right now, in our tv room, the red shape evokes a dolphin and the blue outline to its right, a flying dolphin! this will continue to morph over time, and this is, increasingly, one of my metrics for a successful painting; painterly marks, inventive calligraphy, unexpected combinations of color that work together and enough white space to float the whole reverberating song. a dolphin here, a bunny there, a vagina elsewhere.

the deep red of the inner trunk, revealed by a split in the outer trunk, which may have taken decades to develop, provides us with an experience of the rich coloristic glimpse into the inner life of a living tree.